Spring Gift

I think of her now, how she loved gardens,
and the genuine grace of her soul

That word she used for the slate of human construction,
calling here and there to smallish birds

Black dahlias, illustrative envelopes of sound,
things no listening can hear

The Cana Lilly, the big flowers failed states
in the small corners we call we weeds,

Dove blue gods that let every sparrow
fall with parasols, from the opulence of their death,

Marigolds, young and disenfranchised, destitute,
payless wanderlusts, half the age of the sun,

Secret credulities of hybrids, upstart redacted notions,
of what a flower might say

Were it to salute the queen bee,
as its rump pollinates the whole,

On the day we have risen into missionary position,
forgetting the frugalities of war,

Speechless as a seed, rounded vowels bootstrapped
to the tigers, crouched in the undergreen,

Strong colours for the wireless calling,
the shyness haunting the internecine affair,

And in the ravine, singer of the olive tree,
orchards illuminated, a dais of waifish sea

Crawling the waves stoked by dawn,
limericks of dancing leprechauns and an unctuous breeze,
Couched behind words unspoken, in the back rooms
of ivory towers, unloved and unheard.

Jeff Bien is an internationally acclaimed poet, musician, activist, and highly regarded meditation and consciousness teacher. His work has been published, translated and performed in eighty countries. Recent poems have been featured in 1749 Online World Literature Magazine (Hungary), Jintian (China), The Antigonish Review, The Montreal International Poetry Anthology, Vallum, The Notre Dame Review, as well as several seminal poems, ‘As the walls came down’, ‘Kyiv’ and ‘My mother in Gaza’, which have been rendered into more than thirty languages, are to be released by a prominent Italian filmmaker, as a poetic documentary and accompanying short films, in April/May 2025.