FORGIVE THE MIND ITS WINTER

 

Forgive the mind its winter, its gnaw.

Its icy shapes and fields of snow.

Forgive the spring its hubbub of bees,

its blossoming plum, and crab apple,

and cherry trees with too many pinks

to be properly absorbed. Forgive 

the summer its fallen fruit fermenting 

in rich decay; the autumn its narrow

season, so fervent in its embrace.

Forgive the woman, stilled by grief—

slow singing, flowers bringing—

her wan slippage into bleakness, 

into a world that is bare and dry. 

The mute matters she mutters on.

 

*

 

THE BLUES

 

Soon enough the blues will come;

no need to go in search of them: kind of

blue, blues in the night, eventually

all blues. Suffering becomes a sinew

in the outcry of a hurt hawk. Beethoven

hears only himself. T.S. Eliot turns

to the monastery. Joyce watches his

beloved daughter lose her mind. Virginia

Woolf immerses herself in the amniotic.

The gleeful sharks tear at the flesh of

Hemingway. Ah yes, the burning sun of

youth grows cold, and in the dark night of

mysteries, the merely great become immortal.

 

Note: “Kind of Blue,” Miles Davis’ landmark 1959 jazz album with John Coltrane.