“April/Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.”
– Edna St. Vincent Millay
April: pomegranate seeds nestle
in a fistful of membranes, wait
to be plucked before they rot. Life,
I whisper to myself: stay awake.
Under my nails the gravedigger’s spade
is loosed from earth’s placeholder
as the throats of hyacinths open.
My brother and father left this world
in the same cruel month, both on the first day
of Passover. The flat crunch of matzah,
pungent green of a parsley sprig sung,
saltwater tears. Suffering. Rebirth. Hardboiled egg.
Evening brings rainwater in a dark coat,
milkweed wind in a field. Brighter seeds
always emerge. How? In the park a young girl
gathers magnolia petals, throws them up
and laughs as the white silks spill on the grass
above soil that coils and calls, tentacles lying in wait
under the bed. Sweet alyssum creeps up a hill.
How we cover our eyes with what we want to see.
