Teacher, horse farmer, mentor, poet, Christine Gelineau understands dwelling on this earth.  Here we see how poetry breathes as she greets spring's first full month with a meditation on the hard and the soft of being fully alive.

                   "Bliss"
                                         

April loves a challenge, choosing to split
the slab of winter-hardened earth with the
silk tongue of a crocus.  She casts the stiffened
brooks as her fandango dancers.  At first

they crack and groan, call her the cruelest of
taskmasters but April persists, persuades:
the streams ripple, sequined and agile.  For
April even forgotten roadsides can

ruffle out in a froth of forsythia,
waving brash wands of membranous stars
that glitter like eternity,  then float to
the ground, a wasted galaxy melting

into the land while this uterine
muscle of a month bears down,  rousting
the fetuses each from their dark havens,
thrusting them naked and mewling into

the hungry light.  The least of April’s exploits
is lulling us: we are so eager to
ignore the hollow echo of the daffodils’
blare and the lithe red tulips’ throats of snow.