Dth7
 

7.

Emergences

............Nothing is so beautiful as spring.
………………………………...—Hopkins

The mud sucks up the filthy snow
and swallows. From the shrunken mass
the bus-stop beer cans crown and grow.
A season’s meanness dots the grass.
We wait; we wait. The weather breaks.
It heaves the bones of old mistakes:

Where gulls pick trash from parking lots
and dandelions brood the seed
set to subvert our garden plots,
we pick our poisons weed by weed
and plan. We plan; we never learn
these are the tricks the seasons turn

while down the alleys’ potholed lines,
through muscled-open windows come
the mower-motors’ manic whines
and street rods at the stoplight hum
hard vices in their deepest throats,
decades-old discordant notes,

menace we never quite forget.
We wait. We are not younger yet.

That hard vices takes the place of things said twice before is pretty dammed clever. I like the sonicness of this a lot. i can't decide who it is though, it's between two people in my head.

We'll see

J

The music and precision of this are a nice counterpoint to the deliberate ugliness of the scene. I find that the mixed message manages to capture more than a more expected and conventionally pretty presentation would. To me it has a Larkinesque tone.

Susan

I like the subliminal message suggested by filthy, suck, swallow, deepest throat,...

Yes, Larkin -- like Sunny Prestatyn crossed with First Sight, but with the impression of an American setting.

Excellent.

This one is terrific. That first stanza's process of the scene collapsing or decaying into hard grime with the image of something horrible being born is a marvel in and of itself. It sets the tone for what is done between the first stanza and the closing two lines, which just blow me away! What are we waiting for? The impossible. This is deeply disturbing and beautiful and, yes, Larkinic, but too good to compare to anything.

RM

This one came from Minnesota, I believe. Each line is more delicious than the last. Really fine work - "decades-old discordant notes" - almost Miltonic!

Few things are as rare - and delightful to come across - as a spring poem that turns spring on its head, and does so with flair, strength and confidence. Terrific! (Oh, Rick already said that. So I can cross him off the suspect list.)

No doubt from Minnesota. The beer cans sprouting like crushed fruit from the masses of filthy snow (where does all that dirt come from, so high above the ground) -- that's early spring!

The view of alleys is special too. They run for miles to the horizon, blank garage doors, black city-issued garbage bins, no human figure.

Of course the muscled windows -- ugh, don't hurt your back.

This is disappointment set to music. I love it.

It is amazing what spring uncovers in Minnesota. And the phenomenon of 'snirt'.

Fabulous use of epigraph.

Beautifying the unbeautiful. This is a poem.