Thank you Ted Kooser for sharing such a perfect poem for this day by Susan Kelly-DeWitt. I think I may be at the end of my own long cold rope with winter on this day–when nothing is enough–punctuated by a Coke frozen solid and cleft in two thrown to the ground in the barrenest parking garage ever…’tis bleak and beautiful, both. Yet Susan Kelly-DeWitt’s poem reminds me that, yes, Spring will come again…perhaps soon.
Apple Blossoms
One evening in winter
when nothing has been enough,
when the days are too short,
the nights too long
and cheerless, the secret
and docile buds of the apple
blossoms begin their quick
ascent to light. Night
after interminable night
the sugars pucker and swell
into green slips, green
silks. And just as you find
yourself at the end
of winter’s long, cold
rope, the blossoms open
like pink thimbles
and that black dollop
of shine called
bumblebee stumbles in.
Susan Kelly-DeWitt