(Poem) Ostara in the Key of Bach by Donna Snyder

Ostara in the Key of Bach

for Leslee Becker

while listening to Bach’s Suite I for Unaccompanied Violoncello

The Spring by Franz  Xaver Winterhalter. Source: Public Domain

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.


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