To Be Blessed? 

“The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog”

by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

To be blessed
said the old woman
is to live and work
so hard
God’s love
washes right through you
like milk through a cow

To be blessed
said the dark red tulip
is to knock their eyes out
with the slug of lust
implied by your up-ended skirt

To be blessed
said the dog
is to have a pinch
of God
inside you
and all the other
dogs can smell it

Notes:

1)  Tulips are having their last hurrah in the Conservatory Garden - check 'em out before they're gone!

2)  Tulips remind me of the Netherlands.  Today is Queens Day there.  Happy Queens Day, Dutchies!

3) April is National Poetry Month.  April 30th (today) is the last day of National Poetry Month.  It's been real, y'all.

All The Old Left Behind

April is National Poetry Month, so I may be sharing some poems here.  Or I may not.  (I'm so unpredictable!)  But I will definitely share at least one, and here it is:

Heart Spring

Often, even before Easter,
Last summer’s deep
Seeds rebel
At their long frozen sleep,
Split, swell
In the dark under
Ground, twist, dance
To a new beat,
Push through a lace of old
Pale roots.

Invited by an unseen heat
They spearhead up, almost
As though, suddenly,
Their tender shoots
Find the loam light as air
Not dense, not sodden cold

I saw a crocus once
In first flight
Stretching so fast
From a late snow
(a boundary just passed,
A singular horizon close below)
the white cap melted
On its purple head.

Such swift greening of
Leaf wings and stalk
Was clear celebration
Of all sweet springs combined,
Of sungold,
Smell of freshness, wind
First-time felt,
Light lifting, all new things,
All things good and right,
And all the old
Left behind

by Luci Shaw, from Polishing the Petoskey Stone