Boleros #36

The poplars have grown their winter cotton,
snow that winds a shaggy warmth around the branches.
At night now even when the moon has tucked itself
into its patchy quilt,
you can go from this house in the hollow
to the house at the point of the stone wall,
following the trees’ light and silence
through fog that inexplicably rises
and suddenly disappears.

White seams in the lapis lazuli skirt of a new
Hampshire might remind us of the first time
we saw the aluminum shimmy of northern lights,
the hants’ tree houses
from which through the fluttering doors,
we expected to hear an hechivera voice
and the montuno of a home we had swiftly abandoned.

There is another voice,
high in the White Mountains,
one we carried in your father’s urn
from appleless Jersey and scattered
in the moss shadow of a singular apple tree.
In spring,
it comes in the white-throated sparrow’s song,
a melisma of misery tempered by the thrill of survival.

Soon, the mauve summer sky
will strike its evening tympanum,
and move you through the deep waters of wonder
into a forgiving sleep.

Jay Wright