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Unrelenting If by succeeding you mean doing things right, Ash blows from us madly and without cause. To keep things the same, where do you stop to worship and repair? It is natural to decline. I decline. The modicum of life that strung the little necks of crocuses, that lulled the feeble seed into its disease called grass, that heaped the pious branches with their only whiteness, that broke silver from the jawbone of moon, now walks me through the same lesson of snow until I am humble, until I am grateful, until birches lean far enough to undermine their spot, their root, until aftergrass turns to wheat and rope, and what can I do but walk over it, divine another origin, cast it off.
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Joan Houlihan’s poems have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Harvard Review, and elsewhere.
