Zachary Bos
Raztsvet

In Sofia people all winter long wear
string bracelets as they await spring
and the day the downy branchbuds
hatch into pompons pink and crimson.

The custom is to remove your string
only when you first see a tree in flower
and to find someone to kiss on the cheek
and to tie your string around the branch

as a gift or as a placebo against the fear
that winter some year might not end.
It is May now-so who is this man here
who recoils from the crowds on the street?

His fingers worry the thread he wears.
His fingers fret the string he still wears.

[ raztsvet : Bulgarian for "flowering", "zenith." ]

<< return to the Table of Contents for New Series #6: Winter 2018, Volume 3 Number 2