Still you should praise the spring
—Ha Jin
After all, you remember how romantic
some of your departed friends were—
the sight of a flower blooming could make
them ecstatic. Impossible to burden them
with your qualms about spring—you’ve
praised flowers too. Today you decide to take
a long walk for them, a day full of sun, birds
and of course flowers, even people spilling
out quietly, one apartment complex after
the other, feeling like painting their front doors
blue to banish the drab olive gray entrances
appreciated only by armies and warlords.
You call the names of friends in your mind
and are happy to hold the conversations there,
their voices overlapping yet lively and splendid.
A little girl by a statue half covered in grime
is dressed as an angel, her mother trying to fix
a wing that fell, the entire world hoping she can.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 6.
Tim Suermondt is the author of five full-length collections of poems, the latest: Josephine Baker Swimming Pool from MadHat Press, 2019. He has published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Stand Magazine, Smartish Pace, The Fortnightly Review, Poet Lore and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.
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