This poem comes with a warning for those who love lambs. If you love lambs, read no further.
April Rituals
Spring is the ache that won’t stop playing,
loopy tulips and yellow trumpets,
the sounds of birds speaking in a dozen languages.
My yard shouts in clematis, in pink
rhododendron leaning into the porch.
I’ve had eleven years of this mess we’ve named
springtime. Eleven years of buttercups
traveling under soil to appear and capture
the forget-me-knots. Eleven years of the fig tree
growing too large, for the hiss of a neighbor
trying to shoo branches out of his yard.
I trust the dormancy of winter, not the birth
of spring with its young lambs frolicking
behind the neighbor’s gate. They do not know
that soon two men will come for them,
It’s all very ritualistic, my neighbor says.
The men pray before they kill their food. I just wait
for rain to come, to wash what is left of the blood away.
