The Launch

[alatos]

The day was different now,
and yes, she would walk out into
the garden of unruly ferns
and plump mosses.

The vegetable world was unaware
that the day was different now.
Maybe it was only her mind:
maybe, she feared, it was.

The sun was oblivious,
up there in its nest of cloud.
And though the day itself had changed,
the cicadas remained inconsiderate.

Those rude buggers, and the sun and plants!
Ignorant creatures, that could be so unaware
that the day now differed entirely,
and everything was new.

No, it had not been in her mind.
Unfounded fear. A heresy
against her reborn spirit.
And yet, although she knew

The sun and the cicadas,
blind idiots, and all other  
forms of life that creep
about the earth, and fly, and swim,

Were without reason's inspiration,
she also knew that she herself,
(bloody, abortive pill)
that she herself was unreasonable.

At times. As a child. Was she?
Was she a premature unhinging
of the self's supremacy, a return
to the primitive of images,

emotions without words? Could she
speak yet? But the day had felt so
different. But now it was the same.
But wait! because

there, in the beam of light that
cut aslant the porcelainberry growing
up the rotten shed across the street
a catbird launches its lightness with a shriek.