Carpe Diem
The urgent season is upon us.
Innumerable cotyledons thrust
green elbows up through chill, dark humus;
peepers and green frogs trill their outsize lust
songs from each least amnion of moisture.
Those transparent-skinned pools combust
in a clouded roil at just the pressure
of a shadow. It's that vulnerability
of being alive, exposed to the vigor
of others' hungers, and impelled by your own rapacity.
Birds bicker and breed behind the screen
of infant leaves, while the cat intently, particularly,
adjusts the lay of every hair and licks clean
her paws. Cock's tail fronds spread from the peony stems,
the stems knobbed with hard-fisted buds, their bronze-green
sepals sticky with sweet exudate. Ants come, swarm
the stalks, and bite the stuck fists into bloom.
Christine Gelineau is a teacher and prize-winning author of three full-length books of poetry, most recently Crave from New York Quarterly Books. Read more.
“Carpe Diem” was originally published in Green Mountains Review and in Gelineau’s poetry collection Remorseless Loyalty (Ashland Poetry, 2006)).