Spring Poem

(Written March 4, 2006)

An uncompromising grey contingent of clouds
spreads over and along the frail light blue
of the skies, that seem to be frozen still
in the vigorous passing winter.
The cool winds are gentle.
Flocks of snowdrops are beginning to fade
To figments of brown on their staunch dark green leaves
while violets still shyly peer forth
in their equivocal colour
from the flourishing golden green of the moss.
The wild plum and cherry are scattered with blossoms,
an airiness seeming to float from the earth,
still solid, and the tree branches, still bare,
to the more congenial element of heaven.
More solidly flower the deep yellow and purple crocuses;
the delicate, frilly-leaved clusters of primroses;
daffodils rise up, their unopened petals,
a spear-blade of the warrior of spring in the soil.
Small fragments of sunshine, forsythia blooms cluster
and burst forth from the inverted cup of the branches
that hang down and weave to the ground
and sweep over the dying yellow winter aconites
that huddle in isolation underneath their domain.
And, welcome, a small host of quick brownish birds
hop for their harvest of that teeming life
that is reemerging from their tiny burrows
in the unpromising, wet, and heavy dirt,
or singing their greeting to day and to me
from their perch in the bushes and the still-sleeping trees.