Letters for Spring
a sonnet cleave with Alice Dunbar-Nelson
I had no thought of violets of late.
Of flowers I have no recollection
The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
after long winters secede
In wistful April days, when lovers mate
to discover dead wheat beneath starvation
And wander through the fields in raptures sweet
to arrive in blooming concrete
The thought of violets meant florists’ shops,
shops full of thorns cut, and leaves lost
And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;
Bars of gold drinks, piss, and signs
And garish lights, and mincing little fops
wrestling leprechauns in jelly sauce
And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine.
I walk in squares, by collective design
So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,
held to charted sanity a map a touch away
I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams;
something else helps me remember scenes
The perfect loveliness that God has made, —
preserved behind the glass they stay
Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.
Endless blooms, ever distant sheens.
And now — unwittingly, you’ve made me dream.
That purple field, the passing scents
Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam.
I reopened letters last spring sent
This piece is part of the Cleave Chain collaboration on Chalkboard. To continue the cleave chain, copy my part of the cleave from the original post here:
The base poem can be found at:
