ROMAN SPRING

In memoriam Iraida Rivera vda. de Serbiá

The final flooding of the year subsides
and catching us by surprise a new sun rises
on faded brick and soot-stained masonry
miraculously undissolved by age and rain.
This time the drowned earth did not succumb:
The fertile stench of garbage rises; fresh black loam
steams, rainbowed with microscopic life
where light—the winter light withdrawn
from ledge and vaulted arch and dome
—strikes prisms from
the polyhedral
cathedral
of the
flies’
eyes,
and
every rock
and veiny stone
that cracked and split
at ten below in the iron streams
bursts along sparkling seams and sings,
and every briar, brake, and spray
flashes, drips light, spits, sputters, uttering
the resinous green flames of spring.


_____________________________________
Image from http://dalesman.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/001.jpg