White Dogwood

It is the dogwood this time of year
that bears a certain sort of dignity
within the bold impetuous spring,
for all about the clustering hues
play so ripe and lush to sight and smell,
they overwhelm our wintered senses
as greedy foretaste of melons
summering in prodigal succulence.

It is the dogwood—a leaner notion of beauty—
that understates the vast extravagant spawn
frothing the green swell of spring.
It is the dogwood, a certain sense of dignity
whose spare branches, pale blossoms evince
a beauteous austerity, resplendence restrained.

It is no poverty of passion that makes the dogwood so
for the stain of God’s own blood marks the flowering.
It is that in the dogwood exquisiteness of form
disciplines the nuclear tumult of dying and rising
that rages in all this spring.