April 

Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.* 

We're down the rabbit hole. Time has hopped an hour, the sun is in our beady eye and we can't tell the hero from the fool. Or maybe it's just the one.

What mad nonsense are you incubating like a baby chick about to crack?

Rave to us: threepoets2017@gmail.com

*Edna St. VIncent Millay

1 - Austin Anderson

1

scattered robins

flying the hip high ivy

grown fence to draw

my sight south

to the aspen, the firedrop

crowned house finch singing—

is every bird

call a song, every cloud

caught in the canyon a mist

or a fog, some

thunderhead lost

between a waterfall

& a lake. is every

fallen samara flightless

or every fish meat,

every deer game.

a stone held

by a girl who doesn’t know

the word for it

but drops

it & dusts

her hands:

is every stone

then of the earth

& dust

leaving us

to wash

ourselves & carve

out the wrinkles

of our eyes. is the rain

ever just water;

is there ever a drop

whose crystal

slips the ridge

of a nose & is

then not rain

& not water,

not sweat: but some

intercourse of the sky,

some rest descended—

a broken light

beaming the rippled crests

in a puddle; a wind

wrapping the fledgling

maple & stirring up the pine

needles in the grass; daffodil

trumpets sounding yellow

like the instant

around indigo

mountain silhouettes &

a blue-losing dawn.

is every breath

a composite: some sediment

layered salts, some howls

whose moon

waxes bone

white & starred

silver & croaking

& riverfoam

dragging reeds

along driftwood;

some mix of wet

dirt & sage, & the silence

between calling crickets