Veils along the summering path

Aperio

Everything breaks open. This season that
emerges from a turtled winter summons
every heart to place a toe into the icy rush
of spring waters that river from places known
only to our unsourcing of them. You may hold
me against your body, feel a tireless shuddering
cease in the night as the warmth of another
river courses through what kept you so cold for
so long beneath far too many failed moons.

This is the season that says, Yes. The cow
fattens in the vintage of her starry cellar;
seedlings scour the scattered fields for a
place to rise up in the bosom of a burgeoning
sun; each drop of rain seeks her thousand
summoned sisters as the dance of skirtless
skies drop veils along the summering path.



Quail quarry their love in pairs as the one
stands vigil for the other, his cocked eye
scanning hawkless regions where blue
nearly touches green in the orbital palette
that circles yellow as we near summer fire.

I want this. To stand vigil and be stood for,
to round the corners of a season too brief
to be fully embraced, but try, try anyway.
I want to want what I dare not want for
the beauty of having it is to diminish what
it is. Thus is my own nature at odds with
the things of nature and it is perfect that
it be so. I want it no other way. Spring is
here and here will it blossom within and
without for it is sufficient unto itself.

Let me know this by the press of your
breath against my chest, the slip of two
tongues savoring what it took the cosmos
so long to achieve in being able to taste
itself, behold itself, rise up in the steady
state of this elusive, star-tattered bloom.

Joseph Gallo
April 12, 2009