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PORTSIDE CULTURE
SMALL ODE TO JOY
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Charlotte Muse
At the Corner of Hope and Despair
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_ Poet Charlotte Muse knows this life is fleeting, and yet it is the
sweetest comfort in the face of political and social chaos. _
, Nina Koepcke
Hurry. The redbud won't wait, or the freesia,
or the silver-bark cherry. All the new webs,
shining and floating like unrounded bubbles
won't wait. They'll be gone even faster. Hurry.
If we find ourselves asking whether this is the last spring,
it's not because we want to know,
it's only that asking makes us look.
I know a walk to a waterfall,
past smaller streams wetting the path,
past butterflies flashing
and banana slugs oozing blindly towards
a heaven of pink-flowered sorrel.
There's the sound of the stream, a distant woodpecker,
and the falls themselves, where water pours down
spreading like hair over the rock.
We don't owe everything to madmen who think
we're only empty shoes in their jig with death.
We don't owe everything to sorrow.
_Charlotte Muse has published six collections of poetry, most recently
In Which I Forgive the River. She also edited the anthology in
extremis, At the Corner of Hope and Despair. She has taught poetry at
San Francisco State, UC Berkeley Extension, the Lifelines Project for
cancer patients and their caregivers, and at many other venues. She
teaches and writes in Menlo Park, CA._
* spring
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* joy
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* madmen
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