Other signs

• The geese are flying. A lot. So lovely. Fly fly fly!


• I took the A/C down to the basement. And brought it up again.


• Jeans! I can wear jeans! And long-sleeved shirts!


• Traffic's back. Big time.


• Workload's back. Big time. Which means more meetings. Which means driving from place to place. In that traffic I just mentioned.


• Fancy cabbage (aka ornamental kale) and mums spring from mulched edges of lawns, as if by magic.

In the Morning (October)

You don’t know if these are tears of joy or fear
hovering at the back of your eyes;
here in the early morning twilight
they could be either.

You hear the honks of Canada geese
above the traffic on Mass Ave
and remember a time when you, too,
could fly above the everyday.

Gravity’s rainbow surrounds you,
but still you know the spark
of stepping off into solid air,
the flights of fancy.

Don’t fool yourself.
Your essence remains the same,
thirty-one or twelve,
tears of joy surely now,
brimming again, full—-
filled to overflowing with God’s love
for you,
for the world,
for the cracks in the pavement,
for every living berry
that will soon fall to ground.

Frances Donovan
October 2006

the musk of apple blossoms
the clean-dirty smell of water in a pool of earth
the opening faces on the bike path
the rising sweat of the day

The Jewel in the Fruit

Tiny jewels,
mother's blood.
Burst on the tongue first bitter,
then sweet as the setting sun.

Inevitable this moment
Inevitable the bowl that holds the fruit
Inevitable the knife that cuts its flesh,
the spatter of red against your blouse.

If you had the power,
you would have stayed her hand
from the fateful stem
and hung forever in that sun-kissed meadow.

But she plucked the bloom:
Earth yawned its jagged teeth:
He rode out from his grey domain
and pulled you both below.

She will fall from that field of flowers
as surely as you fell from the womb
to walk with her under darkening skies,
bright jewel on your tongue,

fear rising beneath the juice,
sorrow to mix with salt tears,
all sadness, all wasted, all come before,
all turning with the seeds' bitter blessing.

Frances Donovan
October 30, 2006

NOTE: A familiarity with the Myth of Persephone will make this poem more comprehensible.