A Luminous Halo

"Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end." --Virginia Woolf

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Location: Springfield, Massachusetts, United States

Smith ’69, Purdue ’75. Anarchist; agnostic. Writer. Steward of the Pascal Emory house, an 1871 Second-Empire Victorian; of Sylvie, a 1974 Mercedes-Benz 450SL; and of Taz, a purebred Cockador who sets the standard for her breed. Happy enough for the present in Massachusetts, but always looking East.

Monday, May 01, 2006

May



















May.
The stick in the back we thought was dead
Swarms with green specks.
Forsythia,
Herald of spring,
Blew her bugle, violent yellow,
And now
The dull bush sprays
Snowy panicles over the path,
Night-fragrant, radiant, reckless of bloom,
The dead earth sends forth
Tender shoots, obedient legions,
Myriad, sunwise, standards vert unfurling,
The brown sward swells,
Transmutes to green,
Moist, untrodden, cushion-plump.
Winter’s siege has lifted.
Above a frilled leaf, a coral drop trembles.
The checkered fritillary droops.
The poppy rustles, cellophane, transparent.
We mark the evolution of our landscape daily,
We ache for every bud to burst, tendril stretch, leaf uncurl.
How many times must Proserpina mount her stair before we can remember
The climax was this evanescence?

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