NOT IDEAS ABOUT THE THING BUT THE THING ITSELF

By Benjamin Green

Another long winter— ice fractals on the insides of windows, snow drifts, mud smears on the entry mat.

One morning, the juncos go missing at the feeder, and the sun angles earlier into my bedroom.

If I listen very well I hear how that light, as a still, small voice, begins to sing.

When I walk outside: seedlings top the soil with green, leaves bud, pollen surrounds junipers like a halo.

Like a new reality, my senses apprehend spring.

*Title after Wallace Stevens

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Benjamin Green is the author of eleven books including The Sound of Fish Dreaming (Bellowing Ark Press, 1996) and the upcoming Old Man Looking through a Window at Night (Main Street Rag) and His Only Merit (Finishing Line Press). At the age of sixty-eight, he hopes his new work articulates a mature vision of the world and does so with some integrity. He resides in Jemez Springs, New Mexico.