Five first crocuses burst into bird-brilliant bloom
and suddenly everything flies: behind a car
ascraps of paper rise, two from a flock, startled dumb.
Some lives begin in abstraction; others end there.
If I find the child's fist this universe bloomed from
I will close it again as my own five fingers,
say worlds as one sentence, fit them into a name
for gold overwhelming finches, feather by feather.
With leaves returned, we still hear birds bu see them now
only when they fly. It's hard to see anything,
even when we hear it sing, even though we know
it's there, even if we feel it filling our lungs.
Forsythia insists all that is is yellow.
None of this had to happen, but it had to be sung.
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H. L.Hix's poetry, essays, and other works have been published in McSweeney’s, Georgia Review, Harvard Review, Boston Review, Poetry, and other journals, been recognized with an NEA Fellowship, the Grolier Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize, and the Peregrine Smith Award, and been translated into Spanish, Russian, Urdu, and other languages.
He lives in Laramie, Wyoming, with his partner, the poet Kate Northrop.