There are buds in my garden, peeking out from under the blackened blankets of moldy leaves. The ground is completely sodden, spongey with rain, and the grass is still last year’s yellow leftovers. Puddles reflect the sound of running water; through the ditches, into the drains, it teases the ear. There is a lightness to the days now, beyond the cloud cover and shining through it. Every year, this miracle. Every year, this return to green and light and renewal. I’m watching the trees with a sharpened eye, hoping to see spring burst, from brown to green. When I went looking for poetry in my files and my notebooks and my envelopes and folders of treasure, I kept being brought up short by words about spring. Here are 2 of my favorites. The first is by a woman who was in a college writing class with me. I have several of her poems written down but no idea what’s happened to her, and she doesn’t come up on Google with her maiden name. The second one is by my other favorite May (an appropriate name for Spring!).
Happy Birthday
by Cathy Kirchgessner
I stand barefoot in the rain
licking chocolate cake batter
from a rubber spatula
I didn’t take time to set down.
I ran from the kitchen
fast and far into the rain,
from dryness and thirst
to wet, to here!
I am here!
With spiders and cherries
and thunder and sparrows.
I flip flop on flooded grass,
slide slick as grease
in squirmy, wormy soup.
I sing to this world,
pet her, let her know
there is happy.
I will bake her a cake,
whip it at her rocks,
throw it to her sky,
spread it gently
on her velvet, violet petals.
***
Metamorphosis
by May Sarton
Always it happens when we are not there—
The tree leaps up alive into the air,
Small open parasols of Chinese green
Wave on each twig. But who has ever seen
The latch sprung, the bud as it burst?
Spring always manages to get there first.
Lovers of wind, who will have been aware
Of a faint stirring in the empty air,
Look up one day through a dissolving screen
To find no star, but this multiplied green,
Shadow on shadow, singing sweet and clear.
Listen, lovers of wind, the leaves are here!