Too Soon?

Thaw

The language of past seasons
collapses pumpkins in spring
false labor slides like mud
off the face of ease
and whatever I turn my hand to
pales in the sun.

We will always be there to your call
the old witches said
always said always saying
something else at the same time
you are trapped asleep
you are speechless
perhaps you will also be
broken.

Step lightly all around us
words are cracking
off we drift
separate and syllabic
if we survive at all.


--Audre Lorde, The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance (Poems 1987-1992)