spring in the tropics

new moon & the first day of spring:

i missed it. i am still deep in snow,

heaviness is still calling my name.

i haven't yet seen the new sliver in sky,

have craned my head on my scooter

and seen only the stars among the trees.

somewhere, spring calls forth everything

that was buried in ice, allows death

to unfold upon the earth. fertilizer for all

the new beauty yet to come. and here,

there's only flowers on every streetside,

no fists of snow, no undersides of ice. 

december is blue skies and the beach.

january, even bluer. what a life.

and april, the cruellest month, is yet

to arrive. breeding/ lilacs out of the dead ground,

mixing/ memory and desire, stirring/ dull roots

with spring rain. even here, where the ground

wasn't dead: something did die. everywhere

something dies, a moment ends. everything

that ever happened is added to the endless pile:

memory. and even if we mix desire to this

trembling material, what will we manage to make?

perhaps newness, this time. perhaps tonight

i'll see it, the moon, still fresh from its nights

in the dark, scrubbed clean and barely ready

for another cycle, growing to fullness

and then falling away, becoming nothing,

losing everything. sliver so delicately

placed, such a tender little thing,

a fingernail hesitating on the back of a lover.

a lover, the night. springtime suffused 

with love, real love, the blooming

and the death, the tenderness

and wildness

of being alive. 

again and again,

cycle on cycle.

new moon & the first day of spring

a hundred times over,

and then something else.