Spring Poem for Reflection

We invite you to take a quiet moment of reflection at the start of the brand new year. Photo credit: Luann Miller (Cohort 4)

Opening Without Words

It is the beginning of May

and over near the statue of Moses,

raising his staff to something

none of us can see, hundreds of tulips

have broken through the dark earth

becoming every color they held inside

and quietly they ignore each other

in this chorus of oneness, bobbing gently,

as children race up to their splashes

of yellow and red, expecting the colors

to sing, and maybe they do in a song

only children can hear, and old men

amble through the rows, hands behind

their backs, as if in some European church

about to crumble, and this old white-haired

woman, with sheer wonder on her face,

sneaks up on the pink ones, her silent mouth

a flower, and, for the moment, we are all

opening without words, and her dog,

a pink-nosed spaniel, drops its ball

and rolls on its back slowly, and

my lover jumps out of her shoes,

pulls me by my sun-warmed hand

into the middle of a yellow patch,

and buries her face in them

and then she rises, a color

breaking ground herself,

pollen on her nose. Quietly,

we are saved, again.