Before a Departure in Spring Once more it is April with the first light sifting through the young leaves heavy with dew making the colors remember who they are the new pink of the cinnamon tree the gilded lichens of the bamboo the shadowed bronze of the kamani and the blue day opening as the sunlight descends through it all like the return of a spirit touching without touch and unable to believe it is here and here again and awake reaching out in silence into the cool breath of the garden just risen from darkness and days of rain it is only a moment the birds fly through it calling to each other and are gone with their few notes and the flash of their flight that had vanished before we ever knew it we watch without touching any of it and we can tell ourselves only that this is April this is the morning this never happened before and we both remember it W. S. Merwin The River Sound Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. http://www.poems.com/today.htm janet paterson - 52 now /41 dx /37 onset - almonte/ontario/canada <http://www.newcountry.nu/pd/members/janet/index.htm> [log in to unmask]