tiny reddish toads, the color of the old brick path skip beside me as I water what once was pond now a shadowy bed of wood fern was this their ancestral home, a palace of green mossy water, cool in midday where generations of tadpoles, pollywogs became legged, lunged now pilgrims returned
a warning popped up on my weather app a bright red dot drawing my attention away from the burgeoning green rapidly overrunning winters dread all flotsam and jetsam left from cold and damp as Spring fills in gaps with bud and flower covering each edge of the garden with new tender morsels of Aprils unrestrained promise pink azaleas just beginning to bloom japanese maples with their frilly blossoms blueberry bushes holding clusters of future fruit camellias scarlet buds, ferns fiddleheaded, newly sprouted grasses tender as down then the red dot on the weather app Frost Warning, April fool, it may all be gone tomorrow
resisting all nonsense of calendars and charts I navigate my small craft of hope and magnolia bloom toward all things green and growing I have set my course for Spring and life in all its wonder
step away just for a moment lean back into the sun rest your head gently on the sky all the worlds open waiting for you to step away and run down the meadow path into the greening day
in the kitchen junk drawer with old pens and chip clips or mason jars on dusty cellar shelves used for summers fireflies or falls pear preserves or faded shoe boxes shoved under the bed where treasures of sea shells with bits of pale green sea glass are kept where will all this daylight be saved from one year to the next?
wildness came calling
and shook me from sleep
voices singing moonsongs
dancing footfalls
running creekside with rushing water
their cries of Spring
pulled me from deep slumber
and for a moment
I rose to sing a wilding chorus
and rejoice at the sound
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be still
my heart flutters and
I wonder if I have forgotten my medication
my heart flutters
like a small butterfly wafting
against the cool morning breeze
there are no symptoms
of anything other than Spring
just Spring and all that goes with it
my heart flutters
Spring in the year of the plague
the sincerity of light
as the sun moves
from its morning to afternoon shade
its good natured
as nature most times can be
resting easy on the shoulders of old oaks
and old women
gently easing chilled worries and tender buds
from winters long ill-ease
its the goodfaith
of spring sunlight
as it sometimes hides behind gray clouds
or buildings, dark and shuttered,
the faith that its light will shine out
even if its in the face
of the April egg moon
And you can see in its earnestness
in the warmth of setting
blazes
scarlet and gold
gold enough to hold in your hand
to hold tightly in your hand
until the next mornings light
there’s little reason to do other than what we have always done
wake early, regard the morning sun
sing with the earliest bird
have a hot mug of tea and read verse to one another
resting easy in the arms of the old chair
the world exhales, relieved of all our hurry
and fuming about every minute
she recalls the time when sun and moon
were enough to light the path
and stars were there for the naming
so gather ye rosebuds and we will all go a-Maying
round and round the mulberry bush
resting well in the arms of the good green earth
and easing our hearts with the psalms of bees
Sonnet in Green
Winter’s gray sky belies the inner turning,
Held solemn and slow until that one
True day, where all that is verdant deploys
Into a suddenness of green, extinguishing
that which went before. Moving vernal sun
From iced sadness to tulip petal joys,
Hearts lift with longing eyes singing
Openly, body and soul, to beckon
April blue skies. What once destroy’d,
Winter’s now past forgotten season, rejoicing
In the forgiveness of all springs, a pardon
In the resurrection of now and forever.
In the eternal newness of all green things,
We are all immortal with the rebirth of Spring
***
Resurrection
Held solemn and slow
until that
One,
that which went before,
moving vernal sun openly,
body and soul,
to beckon
in the forgiveness of all springs,
a pardon-
We are all immortal with the rebirth of Spring.
***
Eternal Spring
True day,
where all that is verdant deploys
from iced sadness to tulip petal joys,
April blue skies.
What once destroy’d,
in the resurrection of now
and forever-
in the eternal newness
of all green things.
***
The first poem is a sonnet written many years ago. The second is a reduction using the second line of the sonnet ending with the last line. The last poem is a reduction using the third line ending with the penultimate line of the sonnet.
thecourseofourseasons 