Before a Departure in Spring

Daffodil by Nisaburo Ito (1910 – 1988)

Before A Departure in Spring 

by M.S. Merwin

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