Dirge for the Late of April

The woods across the road

had begun to bud then

stopped.

Yes-yes, another bloody verse

about the leaves

which are to waken. But this time

it is different—

they seem as they were

in March, in the promise

of that scented week of

Spring, locked in their

globule green,

as if they’d some-

how put their feet

upon the floor, felt its morning

chill, said to hell

with expectations;

the snap of

cold to come—

when a furnace is long

in the molars,

died from another slew

of unpaid bills.

Or perchance it’s nothing

at all to do with

sleeping in; that the din

of saws & pruners

will do little

to rouse them forth,

that they took

a single look

upon our landscape,

knew we’d gotten

worse throughout the

Winter, yawned at all our

vows

to finally change, be a

blight no more,

rolled over on their

sides

in slow defiance,

their bed of bark

a harbor for the

buntings & the squirrels,

the children

climbing trunks,

will unfurl

their verdant blooming

in their dreams where we

are gone.

Andreas Gripp

April 7, 2025

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