The Garden of Verse: The Stirrings of Spring in the Age-Old Human Heart

I was so moved by a couple of the poems I read in the previous issue of Verse-Virtual.com that I found myself attempting to write in the same key. Was this a good idea? Second thoughts aside, I simply did it.
           The result was the poem "At the Ivy Gate," which attempts to communicate the sense that nature's annual revival, rebirth -- all that marvelous starting over again -- triggers some deep, universal tristesse in the soul. Even as we open our hearts to all that new growth and beauty, all those new beginnings opening up around us, we know that our own beginnings, and renewals, are a limited set. We all come with a shelf-life.  
           We all know that one day a spring will come without us (or someone we love) to greet it. To paraphrase that most memorable line from T.S. Eliot, spring may be the "cruelest" season, in addition to the sweetest. 

           The phrase I borrowed from my colleague and friend Robert Wexelblatt's "The Last Poem of Chen Hsi-wei" is an old poet's characterization of his early poems as 'wind-borne chaff.' I used that image to begin my own poem, below.
 
At the Ivy Gate*


Such wind-borne chaff I write today,
the gate blowing listlessly in the wind
Ah, love! -- ah, spring --
Once more you rouse me from this calm
passage, a sail boat drifting on the open sea
to the final port
on the gray misty ocean where
the fantasy heroes await us with sad smiles
Ah, spring!  -- ah, time
Always we think we are riding you, fine beast
of animal flesh between our thighs
But you are riding us
             to that final stable
where we lay in the bed of old straw,
on our side, breathing to the gait of the final beats --
Oh, song of my heart...
a petitioner for some heavenly hail-ride service,
I wave and stand on tiptoes
            at the end of the avenue
while the parade goes by

*Title borrowed from a song by Brian Cain; heard at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSVyWIzoHPA
 
 
You can find this poem and others in the May issue of Verse-Virtual at https://www.verse-virtual.com/poems-and-articles.html