A Contradiction

A disquieting contradiction
through my closed window,
a silent violence,
a battering in the backyard,
the wind thrashes pine limbs,
certainly, in a day or two
all bruised black and blue.
The weaker (or uncompromising)
will splinter, the prudent
predictably bend. I know their kind,
the inexorably obsequious.
I am vexed by the savagery,
last summer’s nests and hives
loosened and strewn. However,
I hear, I’ve learned, each spring
this is all a necessity.
I suppose I must reluctantly
acquiesce to “as it should be.”
In my muted room,
sequestered from the storm,
it is a valse brillante, a Chopin
waltz behind the pane (oddly,
not a brawny, pounding symphony).
I hear what I witness,
limbs flung about, precisely
the same, whirling tempo,
the piano a metered chaos,
but a tempered, gentle variation.

David Sapp

Editor’s Note: Spring is the messiest season, and this poem’s brilliant imagery (and speaker’s resignation) perfectly captures the quiet violence.