Speech is difficult of April.
Sky dressed in grays and blues,
rain-wet hair dragging,
clutches backward
from the roots.
You tangle your fingers with a stalk
and draw a dooryard-bloom'd lilac onto
your lips.
Quiet.
Blooming from the hyacinth garden, then
rain drops mount their chariots
and New York declares war on umbrellas.
Attack waves of gales
pull up under the brims,
thin steel supports snapping,
fall defeated in the streets
and float toward the gutters.
You entrench us under a scaffold
and wringing threads of shrapnel
from your hair, say
"Hold these- my arms are full."
"Yeah? My coat is soaking
it'll drip on them."
Smiling, "The whole city is dripping
and much more water won't kill them."
At open air street corners
the hurried gusts stampede past
heedless to turn and scan the alleys.
"Look, another broken umbrella
just left by the curb."
"Reminds me of a wilted flower."
"Or a soldier needing a proper burial."
"That's better- here I'll take the flowers."
A volley of damp gust blows
from the mouths of clouds,
the thunder's speech
reveille calls underground,
the buds wake to rain.
"A closed car is the thing.
Luck enough
to have found hyacinths here,
I say we not drown them."
"This way."
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