What is Coming

What is is coming. Light behind light, presence,
immanence. The morning gray white green mild
still. On the table, my husband's birthday tulips
are falling apart, now that they've opened completely.
The yellow petals streaked with rose spread wide,
a different flower dying, loose, splashy; their center
a crenelated pale green lower, black prongs. From
my window I can see the red undertone of buds on
trees along the creek, a color winter withholds.
Against dun soil, the daffodils' foliage is viridian
signature: spring. The sky is light and lighter: solid
mass broken, opening into white distance, a further
world. The white dog walks slowly this morning,
the man with her briskly, both of them mannered,
erect. I am the woman who didn't walk yesterday
but will today; I am the woman who seeing a flash
of red in the garden, hopes for a cardinal, suspects
a flinch. I am the woman who cuts sprays of a white
lilac which speaks of my mother, my son, the sad
dust of my dead brother, the fragrant promise of
unborn grandchildren, cuts branches studded with
tight green buttons, sets them in hot water, brings
them inside to force. The leaves are growing,
opening; I can't tell yet if there are flower buds,
whether the future holds a barren green gesture
toward renewal, or the fulfillment of bloom.

Copyright © 2008 Sandra Kohler All rights reserved
from Inkwell
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission