Late Greening Maple Deep into April now. And farther south it would be further along than this, but big and old and stock still, it stands in someone’s yard like a forty-foot chart of its own central nervous system, each new bud and ancient ganglion naked under the breakfast table of the Sunday morning sky. Beneath it on the ground, last fall’s brown and dew-soaked foliage lies un-swept like so many bits of fancy paper scalloped at the edges. There will be more. I understand both slow and stasis better than I ever did before— If you can no longer run out the kitchen door in a child’s scuffed and untied shoes across the sweeter grass of a more timely spring, and fall in line behind the piper, tweedling his wicked and capricious way toward the bridge that leads to May, you can still just keep still and stand your ground and wait for it to come to you, floating down like a dipping kite, and snag it by its one long raggedy coattail in your branches.
Joel Glickman is Professor Emeritus of Music at Northland College and continues to teach there part time. He has published previously in Grand Little Things as well as a variety of other print and on-line journals and magazines, including Aji, Spitball and Minor Trips, Speckled Trout Review, Jerry jazz Musician, Atomic Flyswatter (an anthology by Longshot Book) and Aqueous (Lake Superior regional publication).
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