life is the network

it began with the rabbit
or with cutting down the shrub
roots bound in clay earthworms somehow
nourishing leafbud wet-scent soil
or with the motionless toad or
single butterfly plum-blossom hunting

with seedling kale chewed to the nub!
hyacinths’ sloped shoulders concentrating
rain-perfume or it began with
dog quivering the sudden storm
muscles smooth-bunched mud-grass torn
with instinct the terror scream

and now the rabbit
smaller than my two palms together
unforgiven for greengarden theft yet how
our hearts all race to collision
fruitless attempts to separate
life-sharp soft spring air

 

Title inspired by this article from NPR.

Of “those long childhood hours when you were so afraid”

1.
this cloud-built summer storm—
we watch, insulated from all
youth’s electricity of wonder
and fear, saying it can’t hurt
us, can’t come in; backed
by scientific assurance
of two-score rock-solid years
unmovable, stony to the core
…
and is it good that we outgrew
that fear, traded it for what
endless repetition of even sunlit
days, ducks pond-gliding
unruffled?

2.
(from that storm-dream of sword
and flame-leaping I wake
happy as if I’d been reading:
comfort for a workaday
monday morn)

Title from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Rilke’s “Vor dem Sommerregen” (“Before Summer Rain”).