by Claire Miller
This piece was born from the same prompt as Matthew Bird’s, Beginnings.
(Inspired by T.S Eliot’s The Wasteland)
April is the cruellest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land,
as if winter’s icy hand
never touched the warm earth,
and with frosted nails
grabbed either end
of the riverbed
and cracked its skin
with drought, sucking out
hues and heat, honing
something else.
The scene, blossom-white,
incomplete;
a paper version
of reality. Folds depicting the time
when time stopped. Origami
churning at the bottom of the falls.
Triangular snowdrifts on a blank sheet
of cut-out trees, and in their eaves
the bird folds hibernate,
until the first lilacs of spring
unfurl their leaves again.
