Letter from North Carolina
Southern fashion, spring has dressed for Easter—
curved azaleas like rounded matrons,
all creamy folds, coral mounds, and blushes,
fanning themselves under stately dogwoods
layered ivory and sedate flamingo pink,
a landscaped pageant, with mockingbirds
doing their song lists and the heat turned up.
Carolina sighs, summer coming.
Up north your red-winged bird must have returned,
a fugitive from our gentility,
to the scent of the fen, the cold rivers,
and the random waving of the reeds.
Weeks ago, before this rouge and powder,
the cherry petals lingered days and days,
another-worldly white—winter essence,
ethereal slips with no pinkened veins,
unblooded, stunned with transcendence,
lining street after street with eternity.
But as the sun gained, they began to blush,
and they began to fall, our only snow,
frosting cars and blurring curbs, sticking to
our shoes, clogging sewers with pink debris.
• • •
Tim Blackburn’s most recent writing project was a translation/adaptation of Aristophanes’ The Birds, which he directed for an outdoor “pandemic theater.” He is from Duluth, Minnesota and has been an English teacher at many levels in three states. He likes to say he has published more poems than Emily Dickinson did. He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.