Edge, Hedges

Abstract

Minnie Bruce Pratt 721 TheGulls'Cry The gulls overhead cry How How? and, yes, I know it's me making meaning in their voice, they are not amazed at the maples overnight twirling their red tassels in the wind, they are not dismayed that gray clouds inundate the blue future of the sky, it's me, only me, trying to rejoice three days after snow vanished every where, from the ground, from these poems, as nibs of grass are greening the brown, ready to begin their story again, even as I stand and look down at the muddy ground, unable to imagine how I will go on without you. Edge,Hedges Moss in the cracked asphalt, this acre an empty parking lot, red and yellow catkins curled like caterpillars in the pavement mire along the property line, the landscaped arbor vitae hedge upright as red cedar posts, trees sprung from bird-shit seeds, and in the hedge chipping sparrows, streaked and masked, hidden but not silent, spring, the edge of spring, and as I walk by James Square, a small breeze, the smell of drying clothes from 455 rooms of sick, injured, bedridden people, our invisible work of staying alive, watching for the pink haze in the maple trees, the bloom of sunrise. ...