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| artwork by Josephine Wang © 2012 |
You Must Believe in Spring — Jan Zwicky
Because it is the garden. What is left to us.
Because silence is not silence without sound.
Because you have let the cat out, and then in, and then out, and then in,
and then out, and then in, and then out, and then in, and then out, and then in, enough.
Because otherwise their precision at the blue line would mean nothing.
Because otherwise death would mean nothing.
Because the light says so.
Because a human being can gladly eat only so much cabbage.
Because the pockets of your overcoat need mending.
Because it's easy not to.
Because your sweaters smell.
Because Gregory of Nazianzen said that geometry has no place in mourning,
by which he meant despair presumes too much.
Because it ain't over 'til it's over. — Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson. Satchel Paige.
Because Kant was wrong, and Socrates, Descartes and all the rest.
Because it is the body thinking and Newt Gingrich would like you not to.
Because the signs are not wrong: you are here.
Because I love you. Or you love someone. Because someone is loved.
Because under the sun, everything is new.
Because wet snow in the trees is clotted light.
Because in 1841 it took six cords of wood to get through a winter in one room at
Harvard and two-thirds of Maine used to be open country as a result.
Because sleeping is not death.
Because although an asshole was practising his Elvis Presley imitation, full voice,
Sunday morning, April 23rd at Spectacle Lake Provincial Park, the winter wren simply
moved 200 yards down the trail.
Because the wren's voice is moss in sunlight, because it is a stream in sunlight over stones.
Because Beethoven titled the sonata.
I mean: would Bill Evans and Frank Morgan lie to you?
Because even sorrow has a source.
For, though it cannot fly, the heart is an excellent clamberer.
