IT IS SPRING & COLOR HAS RETURNED TO US

IT IS SPRING & COLOR HAS RETURNED TO US

It is spring & color

has returned to us.

The cherry blossom trees

have exploded, filling every crevice

& wound of this world

with soft pink petals.

An old woman sweeps her sidewalk

which is plastered with such petals

& the cars parked on the street

have also grown this new pink skin.

If everything hard, metal & burning could stay still long enough

under the shade of a cherry blossom tree in full bloom

to have it snow on you until it makes of your body

an armor of pink flowers…

The woman stands on the pink earth

herself a crooked tree bent over, swaddled in a pink sweater.

She sweeps the petals but they keep raining down.

They could be her grief or her joy falling all around her—

After this year it is hard to tell.

People are wondering if there are more tulips than usual this year.

None of us seem to remember how the fields were planted.

How out of silence they broke through the thawing earth

in rows of striped color:

warm plum, clamshell white, powdered coral,

bearing names like triumph tulip, bell song tulip, blue heron tulip, burgundy lace tulip, gold dust tulip, swan wings tulip, sensual touch tulip, pink diamond tulip, queen of the night tulip…

After the winter we’ve had, their gaudy, luscious show

is nothing short of ecstasy.

From a bird’s-eye view, which you can get by climbing a nearby haystack,

you will see the tulip field is perfectly neat & divided by color.

But down in the fields on your hands and knees, following instinct

& messy desire, you see how the row of purple tulips

is not just: some are stippled white, some pale violet, some are ruffled,

some are falling apart, some are tightly fisted, some are mottled & some are smooth.

Some are even irises, which have somehow, some way

snuck their way in.

Spring. How the world becomes pink again.

Becomes purple & gold & green again.

Each year we are reminded

that our world can be covered in petals & made tender.

That a tulip field is a nation

of stripes where all lives are fed & fattened on light.

These blossoms. The weight of our grief

transformed into the weight of our joy—

a few errant irises & the field

all the richer for it.