I have carried a portion of your ashes overseas to the Spanish statue of the falling angel, its snake of stone wrapped twice around one leg’s ankle and coiled around the thigh of the other, stone jaw unhinged and reaching for the humanesque hand. We lived, remember? Briefly, near it. One wing arcs up in the sky erecting an honest steeple, one that points not straight but upward and curving. As faith goes. Back to earth. I’ve scattered part of what you were from the mouth of my black jacket sleeve onto the field across, watched over by tall and leaning trees, the field from which you returned to me so many nights cold as ice and glowing, your socks full of grass. I heard the door open, blessed the opening, blessed the stench you brought inside our home, blood tangled in the hair on your shin, bits of another man’s flesh in your cleats. I was curious about this forbidden felt language. I rubbed my thumbs into your muscles, the salt of you softening as it entered me. You were a wonder with your bones and skin on. You focused your violence with a pipette’s precision, and it never spilled in my direction—never though I lapped at its opening, determined to get a taste from the source. Years before we went north, before your bed was my bed, there was a garden in the south we snuck to where spring made us a headboard out of heady jessamine, the poisonous vine’s scent sweet, aneurysmal sweet, swelling our brains against our skulls. I remember, even in that giddy upward state, I always knew truth was somewhere not in that sweetness. Now I’ve made of you a figure always falling. What sort of monster does this make me?

In the Dream in Which I Am a Widow by Gabrielle Bates

Moons on the upper visual field. I replay many springs

for their ripening heat. Five limb in

me: Ornate, Greased, Codling, Luna, Death’s-head.

Two supernatural, three balance need. I feed on fat

apples, pears: Tunnel toward center, a heaven

in the core. Instinct attempts to correct

with a turn toward light.

My dress a brief

darkness. Flits there. Another set

of wings to tear.

Spiral me in the silk of my tongue.

Farm what is economical

in me: Blood for blood, heart for snare.

Scent, sweet air: My cedar,

hung juniper, lavender cross: What holds the body

keeps the body blesses the body’s lack.

Is that not a blessing? What blooms in me:

Trouble. Trouble. Trouble.

So I consume. So I feed what festers.

When navigating artificial light, the angle changes

noticeably. Angle strict, beloved: My head a mess of moon.

Five Moths by Carly Joy Miller

Under a cherry tree I found a robin’s egg, broken, but not shattered.

I had been thinking of you, and was kneeling in the grass among fallen blossoms

when I saw it: a blue scrap, a delicate toy, as light as confetti

It didn’t seem real, but nature will do such things from time to time.

I looked inside: it was glistening, hollow, a perfect shell

except for the missing crown, which made it possible to look inside.

What had been there is gone now and lives in my heart

where, periodically, it opens up its wings, tearing me apart.

End of April by Phillis Levin

Spring broke out but my soul did not. It kept to sleet and inwards fog. Forget-me-nots around the path, a speckled thrush; I spoke rarely and had a sour mouth. I couldn’t make love. My husband lay beside me in the dark. I listened till he slept. I picked out all the bad parts of my day like sore jewels and polished them till they hurt. I wanted to take myself off like a misshapen jumper, a badly fitting frock. I wanted to peel it off and burn it in the garden with the rubbish, pushing it deep into the fire with a fork. And what sliver of my stripped and pelted soul there still remained, I'd have it gone, smoked out, shunned, fled not into the Milky Way, that shining path of souls, but the in-between, the nothing. But this overshoots the mark, this gnashing sorrow, so Wagnerian; it was more a vague, grey element I moved in that kept me remote and slow, like a bound and stifled fly, half-paralyzed, drugged dumb, its soft and intermittent buzz, its torpid struggle in the spider's sick cocoon. What now if I call on the sublime? What bright angels of the pharmakon will come now if I call, and rip this sticky gauze and tear me out?

Fly by Fiona Benson

In those charmed ages, dark and rich With mystery, when, sailing first, The mariner on unknown seas And summer shores bewildered burst,— He planted there some royal sign And claimed the place by right divine:

So I, who came when April skies Lighten the land and get me glee, And flushed with sleep the fair earth turns Her rosy side to welcome me, Claim the glad month my fief and fere, And take possession of the year.

I take possession of the year: Yet as a viceroy I hold, The bloom from off the sea I strip, The freshness from the budding mould, All fragrances, all balms that be, My Sovereign, I hoard for thee!

An April Madrigal by Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford

Spring went by with laughter Down the greening hills, Singing lyric snatches, Crowned with daffodils; Now, by breath of roses As the soft day closes Know that April's promise June fulfills.

Youth goes by with gladness Faery woodlands through, Led by starry visions, Fed with honey-dew; Life, who dost forever Urge the high endeavor, Grant that all the dreaming Time brings true!

A Madrigal by Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald

When Spring unbound comes o’er us like a flood, My spirit slips its bars, And thrills to see the trees break into bud As skies break into stars;

And joys that earth is green with eager grass, The heavens gray with rain, And quickens when the spirit breezes pass, And turn and pass again;

And dreams upon frog melodies at night, Bird ecstasies at dawn, And wakes to find sweet April at her height And May still beck’ning on;

And feels its sordid work, its empty play, Its failures and its stains Dissolved in blossom dew, and washed away In delicate spring rains.

In April by Ethelwyn Wetherald

I followed all alone, one April day The tender, upward gesture of a hill; Prim-roses frolicked laughing, in my way And lush grass shivered with a passing thrill.

And one wild plum tree caught me, like a lad Of ancient Grecian beauty, white and gold, And oh! the tree was exquisitely mad With wine of late Spring wind, wine sweet and cold…

Cloud shadows trailed the fabric of their lace, The tree-lad swayed until it touched my hair, And drifted petals on my upturned face Until they brushed my mouth and rested there.

Hot tears clung startled to my lashes tips… Had not a wild plum tree just kissed my lips?

Encounter by Dorothy Page

Oh! golden is the gorse-bush, Beneath an April sky, The lark is full of singing, The clouds are white and high; But my love, my love is faithless, And she cares no more for I! Then what’s the good of living, With the bright sun overhead, When the earth is always ready And will give a kinder bed, Where no vows be made or broken, And no bitter words are said!

Jilted by Radclyffe Hall

(Written for Mme. Nicklass Kempner)

I found her asleep in the snows: Her head and her feet were bare, And she was like a wild sweet rose By miracle flung there. I carried her in to my love and my rest, And I thawed her feet at my breast. And all the winter long She neither spoke nor stirred: My heart made a happy song (O I was blithe as a bird!): "There'll be an end to these bitter days; I'll see her dance down flowery ways."

And on an April morning, Alas! I was early abroad To pluck a crown for adorning The head that my soul adored— Alas and alas! I was home too late: The cruel feet had danced out through my gate.

O little feet, matched like two happy lovers, Have you no pity on me? Know ye not that this sheepskin covers Sore wounds, and my piteous misery? Your ice has burned a brand on my breast; Then lead her back, to my love and my rest!

Song of the Lonely Shepherd by Anna Wickham

Ah, love, within the shadow of the wood The laurels are cut down; some other brows May bear the classic wreath which Fame allows And find the burden honorable and good. Have we not passed the laurels as they stood— Soft in the veil with which Spring endows The wintry glitter of their woven boughs— Nor stopped to break the branches while we could?

Ah, love, for other brows they are cut down. Thornless and scentless are their stems and flowers, And cold as death their twisted coronal. Sweeter to us the sharpness of this crown; Sweeter the wildest roses which are ours; Sweeter the petals, even when they fall.

Les Lauriers Sont Coupés by Elinor Wylie

It was deep April, and the morn Shakespeare was born; The world was on us, pressing sore; My love and I took hands and swore, Against the world, to be Poets and lovers evermore, To laugh and dream on Lethe's shore, To sing to Charon in his boat, Heartening the timid souls afloat; Of judgement never to take heed, But to those fast-locked souls to speed, Who never from Apollo fled, Who spent no hour among the dead; Continually With them to dwell, Indifferent to heaven and hell.

It was deep April, and the morn by Michael Field

How can I sleep with the moon at the full? How can I sleep with the tide on the flow? Black are the rocks where the cross-currents pull Racing and eddying down to Ardrow!

O were I out in a small open boat Alone with the stars and the fathomless sea, All the night long would I drift, would I float Utterly lonely and utterly free!

All the night long would I joyfully steer Guiding my boat through the moon-dappled foam Till the dark hills should show suddenly clear... Then in the dawning come satisfied home.

Full Moon by Brenda De Butts

Lap me in scented waters, moon of peace, In silver waters flowing under the moon, For now the water-bearer's pouring flood Pours rivers of silver peace under the moon. The dragon is killed, the archer's arrow sped, The bearded goat has trampled out the wine, And now the water-bearer's pouring flood Pours rivers of silver peace and silver wine.

Moon of Peace by Alice Corbin Henderson

Sometimes on nights when thus you swing Above transplanted eastern trees, Do you again hear whispering That wakes your ancient ecstasies?

And do you fancy in the gloom, Perfumed with fluttering night flowers, They walk, your lovers, from their tomb Out of those golden, godless hours,

And there in scorn of modern men And all their little, hampered race Waken antiquity again— Meet in a glorious, mad embrace…

O, little moon above the trees, What shadows out of ancient years, What tomb-enfolded mysteries Have swathed you in their mist of tears!

from Shadows Of Wings by Susan Myra Gregory

If there be another world Lovelier than this, I hope that I'll know better What to do with bliss,

For now I stand here dripping Like an April tree, With rivulets of beauty Trickling off from me!

Now the full moon riding high Drenches me with gold, Heaps my greedy senses With more than they can hold:

If my breath is taken By this beauty, even— How shall my naked spirit breast The crystal floods of heaven?

If My Breath Is Taken by Karle Wilson Baker

The dead start stretching, wonder what’s next. All winter in quilts of white, colorless as their wrists and bones are becoming. They think they ought to be hungry, ought to feel around for photographs of the ones who followed them this dark bed and then turned their backs. The dead wonder if this is a bad dream where flashes of their old clothes are lugged off in boxes, their names in an address book crossed out, darkened over with ink like someone putting a stone on the coffin or weighting a body to throw overboard. When they feel light move into the grass they remember lilacs, white roots of trillium like upside down trees in a negative. It’s too late to change things. Some times they smell fresh flowers left on their grave and feel less lonely. It does not hurt to know somebody kneeling in wet grass is as lonely.

When Spring Melts the Ground by Lyn Lifshin