Early April Violet
An ordinary shift in the chilly wind
brings this seed to sprout amid braided debris,
just above the high-water line on a beach,
where the Nissequogue River enters the Sound.
All one can see are five frail petals
on a slender stem, with no visible leaves
to cushion them in such a punishing place,
where the life of a being so small is gauged
in days, and the thin light of early April
is the only tenderness this flower will sense,
exposed on a raft of dead grasses and reeds,
bent by onshore gusts as the new moon ascends,
when a spring tide floats the violet to sea.
This poem originally appeared in the author's poetry collection, Father of Water (2008).
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Charles Pierre was born in New York City in 1945 and raised in Centerport, New York. He studied at the University of Virginia and worked as a copywriter in Manhattan, where he has lived since 1973. Mr. Pierre is the author of five poetry collections: Green Vistas, Father of Water, Brief Intervals of Harmony, Coastal Moments, and Circle of Time.
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