Bliss
April loves a challenge, choosing to split
the slab of winter-hardened earth with the
silk tongue of a crocus. She casts the stiffened
brooks as her fandango dancers. At first
they crack and groan, call her the cruelest of
taskmasters but April persists, persuades:
the streams ripple, sequined and agile. For
April even forgotten roadsides can
ruffle out in a froth of forsythia,
waving brash wands of membranous stars
that glitter like eternity, then float to
the ground, a wasted galaxy melting
into the land while this uterine
muscle of a month bears down, rousting
the fetuses each from their dark havens,
thrusting them naked and mewling into
the hungry light. The least of April’s exploits
is lulling us: we are so eager to
ignore the hollow echo of the daffodils’
blare and the lithe red tulips’ throats of snow.
Bliss is included in Appetite for the Divine (2006) and first appeared in Natural Bridge.
_________________________________________
Christine Gelineau is the author of Appetite for the Divine and Remorseless Loyalty, both from , and co-editor with Jack B. Bedell of the anthology French Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets. Widely published in journals and anthologies, Gelineau is a recipient of the Pushcart Prize. She teaches at Binghamton University and in the low-residency MFA at Wilkes University. She’ll be spending this April anticipating a new foal from Anastasia, the mare she was photographed with here.
{ 0 comments… add one now }