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Not the Cruellest Month

How can there be despair when the entire
natural world unfolds with new life?  
When the anhinga alights from the Nowhere
he was into the Somewhere you are, negotiating 
his spectacular landing, spreading out his 
Gulliver wingspan to warmth and healing on 
the grassy knoll that rolls down to the lake-- 
manmade it may be, but the green-gold ducks 
don't know that.  They swim, they scan,
they disappear into its mysterious depths  
for what nurturance is there.

How can there be sorrow when the male cardinal
darts across your line of vision with his red reality
twice in the same day into the Crape Myrtle
as it readies to burst its rooted heart?  And, when 
he comes again at dusk to rest on a budding 
branch to sing a  song you never heard before--
allows you to tell him how beautiful he is.
But when you ask him to stay, he darts away
because you are not the regulator.

How is there is no blessing when the stone
gray Buddha in his prayerful place on your porch
with his folded hands and bare feet reminds you
that the gods we respect do not always look like us.  
When the Northern mockingbird who fell in love
with the South offers his limitless songbook
in the Laurel Oak, that wise grandfather, whose 
leafy language writing the Braille of the senses
says Hold On, Hold on, and So, you do.

Copyright © Nola Perez




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