This is Not a Spring Poem:
Every poet should write a Spring poem.
-Louise Glück
Yes, but consider us who have never felt
the bright rays of Spring:
would we be condemned for lacking
a proper word-
your time for youth, your appointed time
for passion,
because we are without your seasons? Here: all we know
is the endless slew of rain and heat-
here: our kind never die
of cold from Winter. Our bodies: much too used
to drowning from the many storms that lay with our mother-
land. Storms heralding from your insulated continents; storms
springing from the same place your Spring was born. Here:
the sun flicks its tongue more often- burning
our soil, scalding our bare feet
while you celebrate your springtime. We toil
to feed a city of mouths: all craving
for what can be tasted, for what can fill
our floodwater skeletons, for what can soothe
the cracks of our skin. Something familiar.
Not words describing a thing we have never seen
or a name that does not even feel necessary.
