April

I am watching a film
About Norway, maybe Denmark-
where winter is one unbroken
night, six months long
a country with vast rural stretches
inside the Arctic Circle,
where the cities are ancient,
and the diet-fish and wine-superhuman.
It is April there, and this
is no glossy travel come-on
because bulky middle-aged women
in aprons and house slippers
are lolling on park benches
lifting wrinkled faces to the sun.
Other women with big strong arms
and a few teeth missing
scrub carpets in the river
and men in suits run, growling
with joy, into the park tearing
off neckties and throwing
themselves onto the grass.
Mothers by the duck pond
are holding each other
and weeping while children
wrench off shoes and socks.
They are all insane with spring
And I recognize them immediately.


Meredith Holmes/March 2003