is a word
whose
pronunciation
is begun
not with
a plosive tensing
of the tongue,
but with an act
of observation:
of the apple-
cheeked school-
children
streaming
through the park,
as new snowdrops
and crocuses
pockmark
the hard
mud there.
And it ends not
with a fricative
rush of voiceless air,
but somewhere
in our hive
mind's eyeless
access to perfection:
a bitter-
sweet winter
as it dies
upon the Earth
precisely and
exquisitely as it did
in our dreams;
the realization
that nature
is composure itself:
the next day
just laid
bare and plain,
the way it plainly
has to be.
