'It Waits Till All the Loaves Are Ready'

Suddenly, it’s spring. I feel cheated and miss the prolonged anticipation of the season in the North, the late-February thaw followed by a predictable blizzard, rain turning to snow and back to rain again, skunk cabbage burning through the ice, the mineral-rich smell of mud in the woods. In Houston, it’s eight-four degrees and already muggy. The azaleas have exploded and I saw the first butterfly of the season – a black swallowtail – flitting among the blossoms on Sunday. Violets growing from windborne seeds carpet the backyard, turning it into a prairie, along with clover and a tiny white flower I can’t identify. I’m reminded of the closing line of Humboldt’s Gift. Charlie Citrine is asked what flowers are growing by Von Humboldt Fleisher’s grave: “‘Search me,’ I said. ‘I’m a city boy myself. They must be crocuses.’”  

Here is Len Krisak’s “March Poem,” subtitled “after an image by Anthony Hecht” and originally published in the Spring 2016 issue of The Hudson Review:

 

“Settling all afternoon:

The falling snow

In gray-scaled everything,

Ikiru-like. (A black-and-white film:

A civil servant who will soon

Be dead—soft-spoken, deferent, shy—

Sits in a playground swing.

As timid flakes descend,

He sings, prepared to die).

 

“A mother checks her rising dough,

While weather weaves a flattened kilim

Outside, across the window frame.

The snow begins to cling

To swing seats, piling.

The mother comes in from the kitchen smiling,

Calling her child by name.

 

“The snow begins to end,

Leaving white bread

Suspended from the swing set’s chains.

The moment's holding steady.

Outside, the picture gray as lead

Awaits late-winter/early-springtime rains.

It waits till all the loaves are ready.”

Kurosawa’s Ikiru is the most beautifully sad film I know, rivalled only by another perfect Japanese film, Ozu's Tokyo Story. A kilim is “a pileless woven carpet, rug.” Bread brings to mind Isaiah 3:1.