April Steps Out

April steps out
of its breathless
shadowy earth
on common ground
near the blue hills
and I realize
there is no bread
in the freezer.

My winter treasure
has been squandered
by my passing memory
concerned only with
music and words
lost in cadenzas
and flashing phrases
by the rain and fog
of my own imagination.

Still, like a child’s wish
for first light,
on your threshold
is my welcome mat.
I long to hear
the soprano sax
next door
or have my new sonata
ready for recital.

Showers fall from
an ashen sky
as rainspouts pour
onto the cold porch.
I’m in my painter’s robe,
trembling like the trees
in a past landscape
of a Corot,
finding my notes
in a foreign tongue
on the piano.

And here all familiar stuff
of nature:
the dead bird’s wings
on watery grass,
schoolchildren on ice
on the indigo pond
near the woodland
in the palest dawn,
new poems
by my sunglasses
and the red-ink diary
with a voice of a memory
I’m always searching for.