Jacques

Spring

You think there are good men and bad! No? A chain then, worst to best to God, most of us somewhere between, pretending to aspire to heaven, caring for our fellow man? Don’t think I give a damn for you, your confounded mutter of unhappiness. I care more for three pear blossoms awake at the end of their stem, more that the stone stair from my room to the courtyard has finally dried, that the sun touches my window. Sir, I do not boast. My heart, spring dawns, wakes early with self hate.

Summer

Not all of summer’s days are bad. Some reprieve themselves with innocence discovered not in rain or air or sky, but in small things—a pigeon feather blown on my open porch, mouse skeleton encrypted by a double spider web in the corner of my dining room. The real is beautiful, but when I watch a maid all self-composed in red cheek rouge and swaying summer skirt, I ache with disapproval. Oh, do not think I never loved or loved a man or loved myself. I do not love myself. I hate these bold hands, this mind, these cold eyes, this lying mouth.

Autumn

When fall begins, the spider leaves the web that ties my pear tree to the hollyhocks. Fall ends the day the web blows from the branch. Between, the empty trap holds true, appears a shadow on the air until a gust and scattering of leaves pastes it to my pear. Then it disappears. The thing weighs less than fairy wings, so nearly is it substanceless. I’m told we are composed invisibles. If so, our acts amount to nothing using nothing to make nothing more along time’s track. And given that, what are these thoughts about a spider web on which hangs fall? The soundless music the wind plays on the strings my spider’s tuned.

Winter

The storm began as rain at zero centigrade, changed to snowball flakes that splashed into the ground, compressed, fell faster, inhaled to mist, exhaled to lonely tears, eager to find the weakness, join the earth. I must have her. But how seduce a maid? With poetry? Before, my words came thick as fireflies or burst seeds from milkweed pods, but they were only said to please myself. What can I say to catch her fantasy? How fit a plough to sentences? As easy I could reign the snow. She will think me icy as the north wind, old as Zeus, gnarled as a thistle field. But I will have the child if I must come a great white bird, or snow, to cover her.