Vox Populi
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Chard deNiord: April
There is a new quality in the air: a sweet
fragrance from the first flowers—that smell
spring passes under your nose to wake you
again, more than wake you, stir you
in such a way that you recall the irony
that kills: the shadow in the drupe, the up-
swing on the ward. How strangely
and therefore divinely your mind suddenly turns
in its thinking of your soul as a cloud
that assumes a multitude of mystical forms:
ant, trout, hawk, gazelle. You laugh
and a flower blooms somewhere beside a door
that opens onto a darkness so deep no light
can light it, that is the zero by which every-
thing in the world is multiplied at dusk.
Copyright 2024 Chard deNiord
Chard deNiord is the author of six books of poetry including In My Unknowing (University of Pittsburgh Press 2020. He lives in Westminster West, Vermont.
Vox Populi 
I love Chard’s poem! Thanks, Michael, for choosing it.
Cheers, Susan Sailer
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Thanks, Susan. I love Chard’s poems as well.
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Lovely
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beautiful, Chard! And timely!
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I agree, Syd. Beautiful and timely.
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A gorgeous poem. LOVE it.
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I do too. An authentic transcendence.
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