Journal Notes on Birth
—for Bethany Ann Routt
February has always seemed to me
proof of the butterfly effect,
mid February, most of all,
false Spring and tepid landscape,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .a graying of the architecture,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .the dullness of winter’s last breath.
Humans,
dependant on sight, untrusting of nature’s lever,
her ability to astound when least expected. . .
We grow to like the safety of the dark, the empty
habits of January, trusting
not in spring but the relapse of color.
43 years,
I haven’t figured it out yet.
Every day I write it down in the morning
and forget it by lunch. Scrawling on the mirror
beside a face I don’t recall.
. . . . . . . .“Enlightened we are born . . . ignorant we pass.”
Later in March, the truth is revealed.
What was hidden explodes and the young
rule the land. Expatriate blooms and startled soil.
Every stilled and invalid thing, mooning and heedless,
silly in their attainment of hue, mindless of the future, seeking
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .height and feigning eternity.
from Autumn Sky Poetry 6 — by J. Rod Pannek
Photo by Christine Klocek-Lim
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