Joan Colby Verse-Virtual 2019 April

May 2019

Here's an old poem that while celebrating spring has an undercurrent of the dark side of nature.

White Lilacs

The white lilac has a hundred ghostly fingers.
It points at the first stars.
It points at me
standing in a May twilight
with barbed wire hooking the darkness where
barbs of stars bloom astonishingly.
The cones of the white lilac
shake in a dark wind from the south.
Fragrance rattles
into air, odor of sweet
bones, night-mouths.
All night the lilacs will shudder here
at the edge of the meadow while
stars dazzle the sky’s bush—
that black bush of menace.
A ghost
walks over my grave as my flesh rises.
The roots of the lilacs
strive through my skull, discovering the holes
I gaze out of. Existence
is terrible. The white lilacs
tremble as I tremble,
departing into themselves,
into their clusters of oneness,
refusing to be a symbol,
admitting nothing.

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