An April Day by Kimberly Stutevoss

An April Day by Kimberly Stutevoss

The old brown grass has turned green, full of lush

All white and pink; the cherry blossoms anew

In a whole year I have yearned for these sights

A blessed thing they keep you remembering

The times as a child that the blossoms snowed

In your hair as a child twirling, dancing

It won’t be long till the trees will be bare

It is a new spring, bringing many births

Some new or some rebirths, it’s all the same

The girls run around without tops like men

The boys dance under the blossoms falling

Like a raging and wild December blizzard.

The kids run, screaming and joyful, darting

Through the tulip beds; them growing up high,

Yellow and red they alternate colors.

A year ago I was running through

Those red and yellow tulips beds, pretending

I was attacked by the petal blizzard

Trying to make petal men, but they never held

I’d climb the trees and jump from branch to branch

Swinging like a monkey and howling like

One too. I’d climb to the top and imagined

That I was king of the world. Stretching my

Arms out like Jack and Rose from Titanic.

But that was then and this is now, to stop

Reminiscing of the good ol days and

Look at the old brown grass that has turned green

All white and pink; the cherry blossoms anew

In a while year I have yearned for these sights

A blesses thing they keep you remembering

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April Inventory

BY W. D. SNODGRASS

The green catalpa tree has turned

All white; the cherry blooms once more.   

In one whole year I haven’t learned   

A blessed thing they pay you for.   

The blossoms snow down in my hair;   

The trees and I will soon be bare.

The trees have more than I to spare.   

The sleek, expensive girls I teach,   

Younger and pinker every year,   

Bloom gradually out of reach.

The pear tree lets its petals drop   

Like dandruff on a tabletop.

The girls have grown so young by now   

I have to nudge myself to stare.

This year they smile and mind me how   

My teeth are falling with my hair.   

In thirty years I may not get

Younger, shrewder, or out of debt.

The tenth time, just a year ago,   

I made myself a little list

Of all the things I’d ought to know,   

Then told my parents, analyst,   

And everyone who’s trusted me   

I’d be substantial, presently.

I haven’t read one book about

A book or memorized one plot.   

Or found a mind I did not doubt.

I learned one date. And then forgot.   

And one by one the solid scholars   

Get the degrees, the jobs, the dollars.

And smile above their starchy collars.

I taught my classes Whitehead’s notions;   

One lovely girl, a song of Mahler’s.   

Lacking a source-book or promotions,   

I showed one child the colors of   

A luna moth and how to love.

I taught myself to name my name,

To bark back, loosen love and crying;   

To ease my woman so she came,   

To ease an old man who was dying.   

I have not learned how often I

Can win, can love, but choose to die.

I have not learned there is a lie

Love shall be blonder, slimmer, younger;   

That my equivocating eye

Loves only by my body’s hunger;

That I have forces, true to feel,

Or that the lovely world is real.

While scholars speak authority

And wear their ulcers on their sleeves,   

My eyes in spectacles shall see

These trees procure and spend their leaves.   

There is a value underneath

The gold and silver in my teeth.

Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives,   

We shall afford our costly seasons;

There is a gentleness survives

That will outspeak and has its reasons.   

There is a loveliness exists,

Preserves us, not for specialists.