It is a cold March – trees have yet to sprout leaves
Here and there an evergreen lends color to otherwise
Grey and charcoal trunks and branches.
Down the bend handsomes lope along.
Horses hooves
tap concrete and not too far
behind
the smooth unbroken
sound of yellow cabs
slipping through the park.
Across this wide expanse of grass and sky
some student hugging books, stumbles along
cobbled streets
expressing impatience
in the reticence of spring.
(I think of you that day:
You walked alone amid electrified lights that scorched your eyes
You tried to smash the void as if your footsteps could click
Away the seething solitude.
A grey leaf swept its way down from a windowsill
You squeezed it in your palm and heard its last
Brittle attempt to remain whole.
It crackled
You searched the sky for a star, but the buildings were too high
And the lights too bright.
You pulled the trigger, a gun shot out
From the calculating night
You were gone.)
It is a cold March I have seen – last year’s leaves flutter
silently in the wind.
No longer green, they roll across the mud.
There is no beauty in bone-chill
But the barest limb will flower – no longer
angular lines
to tell the shape of things
Fresh leaves will fill the skeletal backbone
to spring forth musings
undreamt of in the wind sweeps
across this bare sight
to April.
Shelley Saposnik studied for her BA at Columbia University where she graduated with honors in English Literature and acquired an M.F.A. at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Recently, she taught Composition, Creative Writing and Modern English Literature at Touro College and E.S.L. at Hunter. Ever since Covid-9, barreled through New York City, Shelley has devoted all her time to writing.
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