The Months

January Contorted by wind, mere armatures for ice or snow, the trees resolve to endure for now, they will leaf out in April. And I must be as patient as the trees— a winter resolution I break all over again, as the cold presses its sharp blade against my throat. February After endless hibernation on the windowsill, the orchid blooms— embroidered purple stitches up and down a slender stem. Outside, snow melts midair to rain. Abbreviated month. Every kind of weather. March When the Earl King came to steal away the child in Goethe’s poem, the father said don’t be afraid, it’s just the wind. . . As if it weren’t the wind that blows away the tender fragments of this world— leftover leaves in the corners of the garden, a Lenten Rose that thought it safe to bloom so early. April In the pastel blur of the garden, the cherry and redbud shake rain from their delicate shoulders, as petals of pink dogwood wash down the ditches in dreamlike rivers of color. May May apple, daffodil, hyacinth, lily, and by the front porch steps every billowing shade of purple and lavender lilac, my mother’s favorite flower, sweet breath drifting through the open windows: perfume of memory—conduit of spring. June The June bug on the screen door whirs like a small, ugly machine, and a chorus of frogs and crickets drones like Musak at all the windows. What we don’t quite see comforts us. Blink of lightning, grumble of thunder—just the heat clearing its throat. July Tonight the fireflies light their brief candles in all the trees of summer— color of moonflakes, color of fluorescent lace where the ocean drags its torn hem over the dark sand. August Barefoot and sun-dazed, I bite into this ripe peach of a month, gathering children into my arms in all their sandy glory, heaping my table each night with nothing but corn and tomatoes. September Their summer romance over, the lovers still cling to each other the way the green leaves cling to their trees in the strange heat of September, as if this time there will be no autumn. October How suddenly the woods have turned again. I feel like Daphne, standing with my arms outstretched to the season, overtaken by color, crowned with the hammered gold of leaves. November These anonymous leaves, their wet bodies pressed against the window or falling past— I count them in my sleep, absolving gravity, absolving even death who knows as I do the imperatives of the season. December The white dove of winter sheds its first fine feathers; they melt as they touch the warm ground like notes of a once familiar music; the earth shivers and turns towards the solstice.