LILAC SUNDAY

The ice changes its colors
depending on whatever leaves or
enters its body. The light changes

its texture depending on whatever
takes or touches its mind. The angels
above slip their hands in the pockets

of a branching rose. The sky is round
and empty, a kiss remembered without
a face. Then a cloud, like breaking bread,

or sudden waking in the open air,
Brings a holy day of obligation,
an ache that is better than memory

Or common sense, which one does
without. Watching rain fall: one drop
the end of a thousand year day, the next

the beginning of another, the horizonless
sky weighing on absent thunder,
forcing even trees to lean and shift,

taking the breeze with a deeper
timbre, the way tired women lean into
a note and become a choir…

You can let go of anything but
paradox, as I can hold onto nothing
but certainty, its abstract surface over

which you glide, hands free, not
light but the memory of light
losing itself in the gravity of water,

its binding or unbinding silk,
Its clock cinches and sudden clarity,
As slap-happy as bar wine.

The lilac, a child of ice and light,
A memory of both and neither,
A slight god, bows only to desire.

Lilac Sunday. Honeysuckle faith.
I’ll remember come Labor Day
What comes of spice and color.