Moving Day

by Brett Rutherford

Sometimes it takes a farewell
to get the earth to yield its promises.
Say an adieu to barren trees,
pack your belongings up in trunks
and packages — and then it starts.
A house in a better neighborhood
no sooner leased than a sun
rekindles every root with nascent spring —

the pigeons hop in mating dance
as if their talons burned from it;
squirrels unfold their nests of leaves
and clamber down to forage seeds;
and through the vast transparency
of paths I see again
the smooth white legs of runners
outdistancing the Spring.

And yet it’s always so.
I move to a place because I think
I will love it, but then I know
I am mistaken. Trees fall,
friends die, the loved do not
love back sufficiently.
I choose a new place because I think
I will love it, but then I know
that age and entropy are the same
everywhere. Too-many-times
moved ends in plain-sight invisibility.
This time it may be the end of me.

Look at those crocuses, those gold-
tipped stalks intent on daffodiling!
Witch-hazel, forsythia, cornelian cherry
teasing with early blossoms!
Windows thrown open, faces
beautiful to behold regard me.

A passing cars’s boom stereo
plays Mahler’s Second Symphony
as it dopplers on by. But here it is:
the moving truck arrives. Boxes
encase my every breathing word.
The books have gone to sleep,
all nestled dark with their brethren.
The kitchen is disassembled,
recipes entombed, spices sealed up
in their canopic jars. The pots
and pans are free to clatter
as the truck weaves and sways.

Why is the old place so beautiful now?
It is always thus:
When Love must yield
to parting words, she
turns her fairest cheek to kiss.

[Revised May 2019].