Make it April when you and your mumma
come back to explore her childhood home
searching for solace when Grandpa is gone.
Enjoy the glory of Georgia in spring
as you poke around the garden paths
but don’t look for my ghost in the roses
or the showy whites of viburnum.
I’m not in a swath of azaleas
or a perfect row of tulips.
But rise before the sun first lights
the clouds behind the crest of trees
that shadow our stretch of Oconee.
Bundle yourself and set a brisk pace
through the chilly end of an April night
immersed in the chorus of morning.
The gates of my heaven are guarded
by a sentinel brown thrasher
belting a medley of bird-psalms
from the tip of a tender-leafed tree.
We’ll meet in the moments the new world glows
with clean glimmers of predawn light.
And I will sing my peace to you
in the whistling trill of a waterthrush song
and the sweet of a chickadee call.
You’ll bound like the yearling trailing a doe,
you and your mumma, but girl when you go
I’ll be the still spring in your soul.
