Day 5: Once I Was the Springtime

Once, I was the springtime.

All the new green things carried my name

and hope like pollen scattered wide,

prolific and disastrous.

This parlance of new life

is not for me. I know that now:

my ciphers all reformed and redefined,

my totem, too, co-opted,

and I, my Self, erased from them,

and I, my Self, re-forming.

I train my ear once more to learn

the language of the season:

the raucousness of plunging birds,

the water’s deaf’ning march,

the bees whose drone en masse  

has quickened in the holly.

Perhaps at length I might reclaim as well

spring’s emerald silence.

For now I choose the louder dialects:

the clack of horns, the roaring of the bear.