The Morning Reading: "the tender fragments of this world"

 

March
- Linda Pastan

When the Earl King came
to steal away the child
in Goethe’s poem, the father said
don’t be afraid,

it’s just the wind. . .
As if it weren’t the wind
that blows away the tender
fragments of this world—

leftover leaves in the corners
of the garden, a Lenten Rose
that thought it safe
to bloom so early.

*

image: Lenten Roses by Anne Redpath (1960), at the Tate in London