Ostara in the Key of Bach
for Leslee Becker
while listening to Bach’s Suite I for Unaccompanied Violoncello
Prelude
On the vernal equinox, a lace of rosettes
wreathe a maiden’s brow.
Vignettes
of gilded lilies cross a dome of rainy sky,
amid mists of persimmon, daffodil, and sea.
A maiden goddess walks in rays of sunshine.
Snow’s embrace lingers in the purple shadow.
A cloud of springtime’s yellow blossoms
nod their new born heads as She passes.
Allemande
A bird, still drizzled in yolk, fallen
in its first flight of fancy–nest
to limb to precipitous plunge. She
thinks in deutsche Gőttin-thought
Eine vogel.
Courante
She clasps the bird like clouds hold fingers.
Sees frigid death obscure its feathered chest.
La déesse thinks in god thought, the baby dies.
La morte en printemps, a fact too sad to utter.
Une bébé colombe.
Sarabande
La diosita de primavera lifts the fledgling to her lips.
Besos sing an incantación to air, earth, and sky–
and bird becomes rabbit, warm in its winter fur.
Serene inside the maiden’s manta, nested in her breast.
Menuets
She sets it swiftly among the budding flowers,
gentle as Her lips’ caress of freezing feathers.
The bunny so recently a bird takes small steps,
the world is yellow flowers beneath a golden sun.
Gigue
A fugue of rabbit feet makes tripolets
as it finds its way across a solid earth,
new and strange below the familiar sky.
What gift fit for the Goddess of new life
saved from death’s icy grasp? Its fur body
recalls a feathered past above in trees,
and lays at holy feet an imperfect pearl,
a wholly miraculous and perfect egg.
Thank you so much for publishing my poem Ostara in the Key of Bach, just in time to celebrate Spring.