It’s April, chickadees. We made it to the first day of the first full month of spring, when the weather and the calendar begin to agree. It’s the first day back to school after spring break and the beginning of National Poetry Month, which has me simultaneously exuberant and pensive.
What better mood for an old favorite by Diane Ackerman about both spring and loss, from I Praise My Destroyer, which also happens to be the first book of poetry on my recently alphabetized shelves.
*
Not Thinking of You
Yes, the hot-blooded sun
yanking crocuses up upon their roots.
But no, your wild unbridled eyes
galloping hell-for-leather into mine.
Yes, the bloom-luscious magnolia tree
drunk with pale, brandy-snifter flowers.
But no, my spine’s soft riverbed,
which you again and again and again kissed.
Yes, the fog rolling in off the lake
at nightfall, under the tolling of the stars.
But no, the blur of our knotted fingers.
No, the well water of your deep-rolling kisses.
No, the love-brightened room you fled
for the tight, local orders of your life.
No, my whisperless bed when you’d gone,
where I lay till dawn opened
red arms on the horizon and, in my chest,
nothing like day began breaking.
*
So many things to not think of in spring. The lover who abandoned you. The friend who betrayed you. The neighbor who snubbed you, the coworkers who are incompetent to the point of sabotage. The wretched state of the world, all the ways we destroy each other. The accumulation of hurts and heartaches and the beloved substances we use to numb them.
Don’t think of any of it. It’s April.