Crescendo In March
By Sunshine Werbock
the rain paints itself upon my chest and i
suck in the cadaverous gray looming above me;
     then let it go from the crush of my lungs.
The whole world tastes of green.
they have told me to fetch the mail, and I know,
     but the rain has got me drunk.
my skirt licks at my heels wetly, in weak protest,
and the heady musk of the earth catches in the well of my throat.
It numbs my tongue with green.
Clear slices of the sky shatter to the ground and tumble into the
gutter; infecting my lungs with wet.
it is night like a blanket of black, sparkless dust,
and March has forgotten the promises of yellow and red.
The trees are still black and bent with winter;
gnarled and wizened, clutching the odd gray above them.
     genuine priests of the Earth
married only to the sporadic smears of frothing purple blossoms over
knuckles, swollen with green.
my heels meet the pavement in an understanding of raw, square slaps.
I bathe my face in the unmolested silver of the moonlight;
     nostrils wet with the wind.
but the rain and wind and the dark do not touch me.
it is the aroma of the earth,
it smothers me and
     I dance,
the ovens of my toes against the asphalt.
the black tears the warmth from my lips and
through the blur of the world
I can smell the green.
I spread my fingers against the wet
and raise my arms as if to embrace
     the orchestra of grays and blacks and blues.
and I bow
     to the hysterical green applause of rain.