Terry Savoie: 2 poems

To Begin the First Week of Spring, 2018

Since the first green sprigs of grass,
those that taste sweet as so many past
memories do, rush back to me

from years long gone, but now somehow linger 
as I grind their newness 
gently 
 
between my upper & lower molars,
	arriving as they have
from the nether world

of winter.
I do not wish any small moment
		of such a sweet taste

		to escape notice, recognition,
& my wakefulness. 
These few short blades bring to mind

wildflowers that are still 
weeks & months away & beneath
		the earth, yes, so hopelessly distant 

as knee-high thistles, summer's annoyances 
we’ll find in the fields soon, those ready-made
		stick-tights designed to travel as far as 

one is willing to carry them on frayed
trouser legs. But all that is remote
		now & in some future tense, far away as those troubles

we foresee that’ll arrive months from now. 
           Why, on this morning 
that is so full of renewed promise, 

do regrets always seem to creep in, cat-like, 
           begging, rubbing themselves 
between my legs & against my ankles, pleading to be noticed, 

pleading to be picked up & held 
closely where my blood bounds,
notwithstanding what 

this week's forecast may 
well foretell
about any future we may or may not be afforded.

Aubade

Walking into an ashen, 
       pre-dawn fog,
the color of an over-stewed hen 
   that's sat too long in its own 
           stew in the pot, 
I stroll beneath the venerable 
           eucalyptus tree along the river
bank that calls to me
   with its bittersweet scent,
& now I begin to understand how I haven't 
           courage enough to look 
       my life squarely in the face for
all I'm able to see are the tree’s pitifully shallow roots 
           exposed, 
   snaking off toward the stream’s edge 
           then disappearing into 
that dank, dreamt-of Other Place  
   beneath & God-
           knows-where-under, 
the certain & oh, 
   so venerable roots that run away & are ultimately
as delicate as a grandmother's spidery veins
           lying just beneath her tissue-
   paper skin 
the likes of which sing still
   those old-time, church hymns
for the opening up of the morning sky
           in another one of those shy,
those blushing & cold, 
               early-in-May days.

---

_{Terry Savoie has had more than four hundred poems published in the past forty year in such venues as Poetry (Chicago), American Poetry Review, America, American Journal of Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Sonora Review, The Iowa Review and North American Review.}