Forsythia

For this yellow we ran among.

For this step into the dark house, sprung lock.

For this aubade, for the earliest morning, that daybreak

that wouldn’t relent, though they attempted stillness under

the covers, as though their breath had paused a long pause,

their blood had quit pulsing, but this wasn’t an aubade of

lovers, intent on preserving the night, only of beloved,

the difficulty of imagining days without him, and us

the other children, the way we didn’t know how 

they began again, pouring milk, wiping mouths. 

Called Eastertide, this weeping shrub,

who made milk sugar (so rare in a flower), a confectionary, 

the lemon drops of lament, the sting of beauty.

For this inconsistent winter that broke 

open on a branch, the kind you could force, 

inside in a pitcher of water, sitting in a bay window.

But that didn’t need to be, because they appeared that year, early.

The voice was only wind in their arms, named suspenda for

the way the branches retain light, the way mid-air

the arms could reach everywhere, the roots no longer 

resting in a fixed point, deep into soil, but alit with

this hour and the past, those hours thought gone.

Molly Kugel is the author of Groundcover (Tolsun, 2022), as well as the chapbooks The Forest of the Suburbs (Five Oaks, 2015) and fo gheasaibh: poems of Rachel Carson (dancing girl press, forthcoming 2022). Read more.


"Forsythia" originally appeared in Groundcover (Tolsun 2022).

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