CarrollBlog 9.12

Recovery

by Jan Zwicky

And when at last grief has dried you out, nearly

weightless, like a little bone, one day,

no reason in particular, the world decides to tug:

twinge under the breastbone, the sudden thought

you might stand up, walk to the door and

keep on going . . . And in the seconds following,

like the silence following the boom under the river ice, it all

seems possible, the egg-smooth clarity of the new-awakened,

rising, to stand, and walk . . . But already

at the edges of the crack, sorrow

starts to ooze, the brown stain spreading

and you think: there is no end to it.

But in the breaking, something else is given—not

that glittering jumble, shrieking and churning in the blind

centre of the afternoon,

but something else—a scent,

like a door flung open, a sudden downpour

through which you can still see the sun, derelict

in the neighbour's field, the wren's bright eye in the thicket.

As though on that day in August, or even July,

when you were first thinking of autumn, you remembered also

the last day of spring, which had passed

without your noticing. Something that easy, let go

without a thought, untroubled by oblivion,

a bird, a smile.