There Is No Bloodless Dawn

A poem for the violence of Spring

Spring comes weary over the crest of the world,
carries with him a dew-drenched morning
smelling of tree resin and mint, while behind him trails
fog like a cloak blurring the seam of the horizon.

He comes bristled with pieces of an enemy,
wearing more of him than he does of himself.
I know what night tastes like, he whispers
in the thick air, his skin redolent of war. 

In the ruby redness of dawn he returns, he 
whose death wounds are crystallized by survival,
made deeper, made to heal and then, cruelly, bloom.
What battle? I ask. What war? What price was paid?

Then comes the victorious resurrection of day,
raised from a grave hollowed by river water, 
breathless and gleaming, wet with life. The morning is quiet, 
save for the birds who sing a symphony of waking.

It is cold, save for the concentrated heat
in the red blades of sunlight which slice fire
across my lap, garnet hollows in my unrest. 
Here in the perforated shade, waiting 

for the safety of summer to unbutton my coat,
I wonder at the supernal taste of that
receding world, Night­.
Spring’s voice hums through me: 

It tastes like river water and moss. 
Like smoke from a forest fire. 
It tastes like stars and blood...

Creation, I say. Night tastes like creation.

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