William Matthews’s “April in the Berkshires”:
Dogs skulk, clouds moil and froth, humans
begin to cook—butter, a blue waver of flame,
chopped onions. A styptic rain stings grit and soot
from the noon air. Here and there, like the mess
after a party, pink smudgily tinges the bushes,
but they’ll be long weeks of mud and sweaters
before a finch dips and percolates through
the backyard air like the talk of old friends.
It feels like the very middle, the exact
fulcrum of our lives. Our places wait for us
in the yard, like shadows furled in bud.
On the chill wands of the forsythia pale
yellow tatters wave. How long has Mr. Forsyth
Been dead? Onto the lawn we go.
Lights, camera, action: the story of our lives.
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