Olga Karpenko (Olly), Furious May, 2022
Watercolor on paper
Courtesy of the artist
Artist Facebook, Instagram, Website
On my 36th birthday I wake too early,
toss beneath sweat-damp sheets,
watch the world unravel on a flickering screen.
When I rise at last and chafe against the rough edge of morning,
I see the mountains have tugged a mantle of silver
over their broad shoulders.
After weeks of drought the rain is a blessing,
fattening the creek's brittle braid, but the light is flat and dim,
no bright blade to pare back the skin of sorrow—
the sort of light that leads a Tennessee warbler
to dream sky in the unyielding pane of my window.
A ringing thud, burst of feathers gently drifting
past the sill's horizon; the world is always turning,
setting something that won't rise again.
On the ground below, the bird lies twitching,
a spent leaf drawn across their breast—like a bedsheet,
I want to imagine, rising and falling over a sleeping body.
But the bird stills, won't wake.
There are letters from distant friends, well-wishes.
Tonight I'll bake a cake. But that bird,
with their unblinking eye and the sky caught in it,
feathers yellow as the primrose overtaking the garden.
All along I’ve thought life was a choice to be made;
every day I’d lade the scales and come up wanting.
But life simply is or isn’t; the window closed or open.
What I’ve chosen is sorrow. I see the glass
and careen headlong toward it, though my heart stutters on,
the world steadfast in its injustice.
As if to prove the point, the sky slips its shroud,
the time for mourning brief, feeble fingers of sun
prodding the earth to stir it from its stubborn sleep.
I want to curse it—the sun’s callousness,
the forced cheer of celebration, all imperatives for joy.
But in spite of myself, I’m moved, lace sodden shoes,
crack aching knees and set off down the mountain,
dirt gleaming, air limpid now the dust has settled.
On the heels of loss it feels wrong, the heart's hammer,
legs' unrepentant vigor. But here I am careening
headlong into living, because what else can I do.
For all the relentlessness of grief,
rain has roused flowers from the wizened rhododendrons,
their pale, startled faces blinking suddenly
into the mercurial light.