Small Ode to Joy
Hurry. The redbud won't wait, or the freesia,
or the silver-bark cherry. All the new webs,
shining and floating like unrounded bubbles
won't wait. They'll be gone even faster. Hurry.
If we find ourselves asking whether this is the last spring,
it's not because we want to know,
it's only that asking makes us look.
I know a walk to a waterfall,
past smaller streams wetting the path,
past butterflies flashing
and banana slugs oozing blindly towards
a heaven of pink-flowered sorrel.
There's the sound of the stream, a distant woodpecker,
and the falls themselves, where water pours down
spreading like hair over the rock.
We don't owe everything to madmen who think
we're only empty shoes in their jig with death.
We don't owe everything to sorrow.
Charlotte Muse has published six collections of poetry, most recently In Which I Forgive the River. She also edited the anthology in extremis, At the Corner of Hope and Despair. She has taught poetry at San Francisco State, UC Berkeley Extension, the Lifelines Project for cancer patients and their caregivers, and at many other venues. She teaches and writes in Menlo Park, CA.