Through the Windows of Spring

Athens, Georgia
April 14, 2018

When nights drift through open windows 

and you wake to mornings enveloped in green, 

the world is a nursery with you again 

the grass-stained boy hopping rocks 

by a slow creek that winds through 

the idylls of childhood. Or the lithe girl 

in scruffy jeans clutching a rough trunk 

halfway up the side yard plum 

which thrives on the edge of an unruly lawn. 

The aroma of onion grass spikes the air 

as you weave a bouquet of dandelions 

and skip to a medley of mockingbird tunes.

You wander once more through living woods 

where tangles of jessamine hang from the trees 

and armies of iris encircle the ponds.

You gaze in wonder at street-side weeds 

where scattered arcs of Dove’s-foot flowers 

make lavender galaxies tangled in green. 

And you rest again on a carpet of clover 

woven with tendrils of purple vetch 

in the spell of a flowering dogwood. 

You are the boy now covered in mud, 

the girl with a jessamine necklace. 

You slip through the windows of spring.

On the First Wave of Spring

Athens, Georgia
March 28, 2018

You may sense a strange lightness
inside your bones. Unseen, life
is rising. Unheard, earth hums.

And so it comes,
the imperceptible turn
when winter tips to early spring.

First it stirs.
It seeps through roots.
It creeps on marbled salamander feet.

It emerges from burrows,
arises from mud,
ascends into shifting winds.

It slithers onto shallow rocks,
peers from gaps in mossy logs,
rustles under leaf litter.

It chitters from trees,
trills from swamps,
and peeps from vernal pools.

It shivers, and saucer magnolias bloom,
pears and cherries wear blossoms of snow,
and redbuds slip into hot pink lace.

It smiles, and forsythia shine,
each bush a burst of golden stars
in a firmament of baby green leaves.

It laughs, and daffodils dance again.
They sway to the slipstreams of speeding cars
and swirl in the cleft of exit ramps.

And in the rhythms of wind and light

across the parks and small-town squares –
the breath of Earth, the dance of life.

Forsythia

American toads in wetland, February 16, 2018: