Trillium

A Spring ephemeral

March mud slides into April,
April slaps the house silly,
slams the door back in my face.

May, I take a morning walk
in an anorak, only to find
trout lily’s sprouted gills

instead of flowers. Aeolus
roars and shoves me home,
my retreat now one more

sad retreat. I’ll stay in
and set the locks against
this botch, this washed-out

washed-up spring—

So who is it who calls
my name, and who is it then
who runs, arms akimbo,

down the brambly
path, afraid to be
too late, afraid

this mean and frigid
mountain has no more
place for fragile beauty?

Who but I
who cups the wide
leaves in shaky

palms, lifts
the bowed and
blood-red head

for a kiss,
thrilled once more
by what I’d almost lost?

Editor’s Note:
The narrator, concerned that the mountain landscape has altered due to climate change, looks for the familiar spring sights and flowers on her walk. Assonance, consonance, alliteration, and specific details of the landscape, weather, and flowers keep the reader engaged.

Hilde Weisert’s poetry collection The Scheme of Things was published by David Robert Books, 2015. Poems in magazines including Ms., Cincinnati Review, Plume, Cortland Review, Prairie Schooner, The Sun, Lips, anthologies including Choice Words and What They Bring: The Poetry of Migration and Immigration. Awards include 2017 Gretchen Warren Award (New England Poetry Club), 2016 Tiferet Journal Poetry Award. She is the president of the Sandisfield Arts Center in western Massachusetts. She lives in Sandisfield and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.