Robin...Twilight

As I sit at my computer in this April twilight, the last of the day’s sun is caught in the wild yellow forsythia bush outside the window. And a robin is splashing in the copper birdbath, completing his evening toilette. The day is winding down, and I want it to linger longer…until at least eight. I’m not a great fan of darkness (though I have friends who love the night and work well into it); for me, darkness is a time of folding into oneself like the purple oxalis that closes its witchy wings and turns inward toward dreams.

Here is a poem about April, titled “The Angel of Pure Joy.”

When you smell spring in the silent stars
and taste the ginger of narcissus, the bite
of newborn chive; when the saffron forsythia
clings to your tongue like fairy dust; when you hear
the sweet voice of your wild bird threaded through still-
bare maples, caught in song; when your big, yellow cat
curves just so behind your knees and the smooth, cool
sheets are spun of fog, rosemary, salt and pine;
when there is no difference between dreams and the night,
then it is that the Angel of Pure Joy speaks your name out loud.