I feel the spring far off, far off,
The faint, far scent of bud and leaf—
Oh, how can spring take heart to come. . .
Sara Teasdale, Spring in War-Time, 1917
After another morning reading of such vacuous cruelty, I look to see what the poets say, the women poets. Down below the foothills, spring. Here above Phantom Canyon, spring latent: last night’s snow dripping from the metal roof, the lavender of the pasque flower/ wind flower/ easter flower ghostly. The red-tailed hawk my husband and I saw a week ago how we greeted it with such joy in a time of war. Evening after evening, she broods over her clutch of eggs. And now, I have lain down beneath her, to catch her in the camera’s eye, as if to hold her forever. The early stalks of golden banner that fill June with such light hesitate beneath the winter bunch grass. When how beauteous the earth? When how holy? Behind the Sangre de Cristo mountains, the sun touches the contrail of a jet into a vein of light.
What girl or woman in some country of war I am made the murderer of
sees some tiny petalled thing or feathered light to touch?
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