April

April hid hope
among its cruelties,
promised change,
slow to settle
as the yellow grass
unbent.

Buds swelled
but did not break;
green beneath sleet,
sharp blades struggled
through cold soil,
the heft of tomorrow,
still too much.

Time hung heavy,
an inversion,
of uncertain weather,
sky’s pressure,
moving wind
restrained
by reluctance.

Unbroken silence,
or the illusion of it
at dawn or twilight,
dimmed the eyes
like sorrow
or regret.

April lay in the earth.

A microscopic
coming of days,
raged among its roots,
binding, reconnecting,
spiraling.

© BH, 2021

---

Then, spring. But this April was a cold one and I remembered Eliot’s ‘cruellest month’. Somewhere to begin… The cold persisted with frosts and snowfall, hail the size of peas. It was as if the weather was stuck. So it became the slow arrival, the imperceptible change, the unwillingness to time to move us on.

But it was the same last year - and the year before. I thought about what goes on under our feet. Whatever we are doing to it now, it resists. It rages.