Glass Poetry Press

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Volume One Issue Three

Caroline Misner

Trilliums in May

A milk bottle film coats the sky, the humpbacked hills bristle evergreen, tricorns white as arctic snow unfurl their brazen petticoats, stiff and starched. They signal the end of dark long days, of kisses and missiles of sleet that pierced the curled bud's slumber in slow degrees. I am told they are beautiful, but I see no beauty in them; even the fattened bees cannot manage to sip their bitter nectars. There are so many of them speckling the weathered path that cuts a crooked curve through the chilled black loam. At dusk they fold their bloodless mouths over little pea green hearts; though anaemic and sickly they can withstand the brittle frost. The sky turns to rancid cream, darkens; bats who believe they are stars mark the air with their curses. The wind flexes its muscle one last time before it dies; its grave is a mattress of downy moss, dank and shallow where the cold things crawl.