in Berlin today, and I wrote this poem. Usually I hold and pair them with paintings. But snow only comes once in late April. (Except yesterday we had hail. Twice.)
***
“April Snow”
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”
—Ecclesiastes 3, KJV
Tell me why
I was not good enough to be loved
I was not worth hearing, much less helping.
You have human beings and then there is the mass,
and I was not one of your people.
Or else you were an ass.
Come up with a reason
it was my fault, it was something
I did, something I said, or didn’t.
Go on, take me to task.
It had to do with the limits
of your capacity and I needed too much.
Or else I did not properly ask.
At the end of the storm
at the end of the life
at the end of the season
everything is different:
there is no I
there is no you
there is no reason.
Sometimes still in spring
the snow comes back and stays.
Even while the sun is shining,
it hails for days.
People think it’s strange,
except some of us understand:
Winter is a refugee,
rapping gently at spring’s fences,
hoping and asking, but knowing
although there is space enough
although she is strong and beautiful
although she holds a lot
Summer won’t hold her
hold her freezings hands
hold her shivering knees
hold her chilly breath.
For everything, a season.
For every season, death.
