Your Sunday Poem

A wonderful, new (to me) poet, Erin Belieu, from "Infanta," published by Copper Canyon Press, said publication supported by a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Lannan Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and the Washington State Arts Commission.  And thank you to all of them for their support.  Ms. Belieu is a wonderful poet, her collections are available in paperback, so head for your local bookstore and support her today -- buy one of her books. 

The Spring Burials

Violets growing through the asphalt mean
the usual of spring's predicament:

how, busy getting born, still wings and green
will falter, twist, misgrow their management

and die.  Violets grow on one curled leg,
a slender prop obliviously crushed,

and newborn birds are falling from their eggs,
still feathered wet and hidden in the brush

when you walk by.  They die in spite of us;
in shoebox nests and jelly jars supplied

with the best intentions.  Bring them in the house,
then fuss, arrange things, feed them.  Occupy

yourself with worms and eyedroppers, sunlight
and potting earth.  You'll bury them in days,

feel silly in your grief.  And still you'll sit
a moment on the blacktop, study ways

to save an unimportant, pretty weed
or bird.  You're still a fool -- a fool to bend

so sentimentally and fool in deed,
assuming you know better.  Spring is kind.