So will the song carry into alteration

between midwinter's contending winds—
              until a kind of description is completed and torn
from human preoccupation—

                                               (I heard it floating a little way along
February's thinning current of suggestion
               whose once early sway inhabited what it implied.)

                           So will the song then carry me within
the assailing passage it's made
             (like a wind deep inside another wind,
living without a May or June to come)

             as it shifts, lightly, in the adventive fennel—
releasing the balm in the plant's manifold uses—

giving brief, aromatic bending to the bond.

Jocelyn Emerson holds graduate degrees in Renaissance literature and creative writing from the University of Iowa.  The author of a chapbook, Confirmations of the Rapt (Red Dog Press), her poetry and reviews have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Barrow Street, Black Warrior Review, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Epoch, New American Writing, Seneca Review and elsewhere.  She is completing a Ph.D. in Renaissance literature and the history of science.

"Reasserting a dialogue between truth and beauty, Jocelyn Emerson has given us renewed grandeur and consolation." —Bin Ramke

"Spring Argument" was taken from Jocelyn Emerson's new book Sea Gate (Alice James Books 2002)

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