Handfasting in Spring

And the book said, In the beginning there was light and the light was
           good though it was but dim,
a small spark in a big fire:

In the equinal light the world begins to stir and move in pairs, shed
           wool like casements from the
winter's long and hapless body:

And from the beginning there was the Word, the Word which was Law,
           the word being light, dim
flicker, small spark in a big fire and through which we'd be forgiven
everything--bad Pap smears, times you vamoosed without tipping,
           departures sans alibi,
the myopic night vision of your small-town loves, the shoulda coulda
           woulda of the body's
immeasurable failures like petty combustions held to light, small sparks
           in a big fire:

The world is of one mind to bury its hatchet of remorse, to call to its
           friends on the shore, C'mon
in, the water's fine, is of another to steal away and run off Godspeed to
           the marsh
where hordes of springtime peepers sound their propagant hullabaloos:

In May new things begin to root and move in the earth, earth the dupe,
           earth the long-suffering
body, hapless light, small spark in a big fire, by turns soothed and held
           hostage by the specter
of its fecundity, O springtime agendas of rupture, Go now, break
forth or be broken:

And from the beginning there was the light and though it was good it
           was but dim, light
the dupe, light the long and hapless body, its recollections scattered by
           springtime's
muscular wind--her hair on the pillow, his footsteps' concussive reports—
           as surely the rivers go
to ice and the ice to meet its reckoning, sure as the May sun hangs
its bulbous apparition through the clouds, how it started: the light's
           undoing
and the stuporous trudge unto, how it ends: small spark in a big fire

Robyn Art was born in Boston. Her recent poems have appeared in Slope, The Hat, Conduit, Slipstream, The New Delta Review, Rhino, and canwehaveourballback.com. She's the author of the poetry manuscript, The Stunt Double In Winter, which was selected as a Finalist for the 2004 Kore Press First Book Award. Her chapbook, Degrees of Being There, was released by Boneworld Press in May 2003. A second chapbook, No Longer A Blonde, is forthcoming from Boneworld Press in 2005. Currently she lives in Brooklyn.