Jody Azzouni

Poetry

The Other Side of Spring

Originally published in Tight 7:1, 1996
Added 1/17/2023
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The Other Side of Spring

Poem | Jody's Notes

Jody's Notes

Soon this poem will need footnotes. To explain what snow is. Spring. Seasons. Stuff like that.

 

Which is worse? An endless cycle. Or a cycle that finally ends in a static landscape. How do you answer a question like that? (Why should the cosmos be a place where a question like that has to be posed?)

 

I republished the poem in The Lust for Blueprints.

 

Spring yet again: broken

promises made. The season’s budget

squeezing time from a stone:

lichens springing up as if

a future. Only the word’s

sinewy grasp gives this

meaning: makes punctuated

hope something pleasant,

something we bear

over and over again, like

new buds without memory:

no recollection of how

the yawn of fall

punctures our triumph,

omens the ringing slay bell,

the dead white

we’ll soon be covered in.