Our Loves Quit the Places We Bury Them, and Ascend

John Terpstra

Yellow green, the willows are emerging first again
out from our color-free past, whisper
how brown it’s been, is yet.
Across the street
the magnolia bush, wild candelabrum, has set
pink white tapers at its fingertips, waiting
for the day to ignite.
Everyone waits
to see what will happen next, asks why
the leavetaker lingers.

As the long dying weeks
of this latest winter slowly stripped us
we ate less and less, slept through the mornings.
Pinned to these weeks as we are, and knowing
the seasons, we accept the drawn-out ending;
but natural history, nor past attendance, nor
scriptured almanac prepare us for the always abrupt
brutality, the late storm screaming ice and snow,
or that quieter violence which intersects earth
and spearing lily head.

All color is contained in white.
Why shouldn’t we prefer to pull that cover tighter
that the late storm drops, and the third day
liquefies, revealing the ground, its sample resurrection
of crocuses, like brightened memories,
purple yellow wakings
from a death we should be glad of?

We live on the simple surface of things, have felt
the earth’s floor not deflect, stamping our feet
to shed snow, no deep reverberation to trouble
our limbs, the core; till now—the ground cracks open
wider than a crocus head and, granted spring
the earth has always had, our loves have quit
the places we had buried them. We see them walking,
and feel the earth that bears us reverberate
each step: the landscape’s an event
more sea than not, that we
must learn to walk again
and trust
what happens next.

Reach your hand.
This past half-season has taken us
like water, beyond reason and belief. We live
where water empties itself, rolls stone, or rises
as a hill; and the air breathes in.
Should it
surprise us you take leave, and rise
again, intangible as vapor, caught up
as the cloud we’re staring after, then witness
what we see: a hand, a rose, a fraying sleeve.
All color is contained in shapes the wind will free,
that linger our delight and desolation—
and ours
are now your only eyes, this
your hand that’s reached, let go, and these
your only feet, returning toward our lives.

Visit John Terpstra as Image Artist of the Month for September 2000

Issue #7 • Fall 1994