Lilac Days in Massachusetts: The Sweet Smell of Spring

Lilac Days

They shine because this is their month,

their showtime,

but so also the cherry and other fruit trees

in their many branching varieties, 

as do the dogwood, and apple, and willow,

and the nameless white-flowering beauties,

blossoms, their offerings lasting only a week or maybe, with teasing, and the right weather,

a little more.

 

And the gentle sun,

Keeping its schedule, as always, to a perfection

unknown here below

slipping with matchless grace down a cloudless horizon

to the last bans of sunset, twilight

 

but still at night  they sleep with us

still they house and keep the birds safe

     in the quiet hours

and still the morning prays again

that time persists once more to be beautiful

precisely because it is so much older than we

May All Be Blessed!*

 

The little fingers on the little piggies

The big men in my childhood nightmares

     thumping through the shadows of my mind

The killers and the haters, even.

     Who somehow survive my wrathful imaginings

as if they were nothing but what they are –

      maya!

 

All the yoga ladies

The muscled guys

The busy life of the highway where

     the machines take us where they will

And the slow life of the late winter day –

     Gleaming March sunshine,

Brutal west wind

And the yard full of squirrels chasing one another’s

     tails

The tails wagging the dogs of peace,

The people below the bombs

The lasers of love’s eternal springtimes,

The offerings,

Those who carry the finger bowls of time

In which we dip our fingers

*(After a song by Peter Kater)