Inaugural Poem

Spring, Unraveling

Leah Mell ’19 

I.

Spring, and pale blossoms unfold in the wind.

Warm snowglobe campus exhales into morning.

We are alive here, still. We trace and retrace

our ghosts: Bricks shaped by brown hands,

vital and stolen. Land stripped from its caretakers.

Wounds like roots, branching beneath us.

Memory is not hindrance, but necessity.

The same sun rises above the same trees.

The same earth presses us against the same sky.

Yesterday, we woke with salt in our mouths,

and searching. We prayed for a body

that knows what it means to take flight,

to rise up over the earth and sing.

This is imperfect, yes. It is what we have.

The wind in our ears, the shivering of wings.

II.

The wind in our ears and the shivering of wings

hinge open and burst in a Southern twilight.

Someone is reading Clifton in the library garden.

Someone is calculating the mass of a star.

We filter into buildings and construct

a chorus of greeting, inviting and bright.

We are together and by ourselves.

Somewhere: a party. Somewhere: a ringing bell.

The meaning breaks down again,

this time spilling cello concertos

and anatomical hearts. We are singing next door.

Dusk slips into precedented night.

Tomorrow, we will look into the sun.

Promise is not enough.

III.

Promise is not enough

to carry us safely across the lake.

We are hesitating at the horizon.

We are counting the birds silhouetted in the air,

our charming clothes adorning our bodies.

In the rupture: an imagining.

Together, we are sure to amount to something

before we fold into the balm of dawn.

Our nascent wanting blooms from our chests

and explodes. We hold one another’s hands,

momentary and brilliant.

Without a telescope, we can see for miles.

Spring unravels from our throats,

and pale blossoms unfold in the wind.