Constance Rowell Mastores

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.