AWAKENING 

by John Muro

An April sky is unfurling in a lavish shade

of blue and the type of opulent light that can

only be born from loss and suddenly the winter,

with its stale, long-gone blossoms of hydrangea

and leafless, scarlet-stemmed shrubs, doesn’t

hurt as much, and many tiny gestures of grace

are coming back to me, including those extended

moments of sunlight that now seem lost in

leisure, birds chirping without care above paths

matted with moss, and tiny colonies of crocus

scattered like confetti across a land that’s newly

greening and emerging in wonder while the

pungency of a wet earth and leaf musk is hitched

to a wind that’s wanting to carry all of this far

beyond a stream of splattered gravel and a

snowless field and then, pleased with itself

and knowing blessings often arrive without

bidding, settles back in wonder upon the distant

ledge of a stone-studded hill as if all had been

predicted or had some vital purpose to serve.