Robin...Twilight

Robin. Twilight.

As I sit at my computer in this April twilight, the last of the day’s sun is caught in the wild yellow forsythia bush outside the window. And a robin is splashing in the copper birdbath, completing his evening toilette. The day is winding down, and I want it to linger longer…until at least eight. I’m not a great fan of darkness (though I have friends who love the night and work well into it); for me, darkness is a time of folding into oneself like the purple oxalis that closes its witchy wings and turns inward toward dreams.

Here is a poem about April, titled “The Angel of Pure Joy.”

When you smell spring in the silent stars
and taste the ginger of narcissus, the bite
of newborn chive; when the saffron forsythia
clings to your tongue like fairy dust; when you hear
the sweet voice of your wild bird threaded through still-
bare maples, caught in song; when your big, yellow cat
curves just so behind your knees and the smooth, cool
sheets are spun of fog, rosemary, salt and pine;
when there is no difference between dreams and the night,
then it is that the Angel of Pure Joy speaks your name out loud.

The Angel of Pure Joy. The last of the day’s sun. April.