The worst thing imaginable

Spring 55

Spring pussyfoots in again. It might rain again later, or not.
Yeah, I saw a leafy congregation knotted around the dark
center of a malformed tree trunk like negroes huddled
around a blazing oil barrel on a gated street in Beverly Hills.

This is my 55th spring and it looks like 4, 11, 15, 27, 32, and
49. Seasons are like busted lotteries, all the numbers just off
by one left or two right. Today I serve dirty punch to new-turning
worms and tell them what a great job they’re doing with the
bloomgrass and all. They ignore me because worms lack ears.



They are my nation now. They are artists and poets and makers
of black music that no one can hear, no one can see because
we lack eyes. This season does not come with pre-installed hand-
rails, so if you’re feigning to be feeble, have at it. I will call lazy
lazy and you will go your whole life without suppers of wordcraft
and paintcraft, dancecraft and storycraft because you have done
the worst thing imaginable to yourself. I feel sorry for you nearly
as much as for myself. You would relegate me to pointlessness,
coil the looted core that blackened Eve’s blind eye and I am not
even the sorriest thing to have ever trespassed your orderly world.



I am spring come pussyfooted through the bolted back door leaving evidence on the white kitchen tile for which you have ample mops set aside for such unwarranted intrusions. It was never about flowers, or love’s unkindling, or the barbed larks' pitiful calliopes spent on empty meadows. Spring is too goddam allegorical for its own good. Any poet can crucify a metaphor and with one handy nail can teach the trick.



Winter tenders its violation and laughs as it turns to leave. I’ve heard this before as have you. Grace is not a state of acceptance; it’s a half-written sentence of a bitter defeat. Suck it up and let the ice saints enchant. It is their time this last sunset. Even spring knows that.

Joseph Gallo
March 20, 2007