Poetic License
Just Before April Came
The snow piles in dark places are gone.
Pools by the railroad tracks shine clear.
The gravel of all shallow places shines.
A white pigeon reels and somersaults.
Frogs plutter and squdge—and frogs beat the air with a recurring thin steel
sliver of melody.
Crows go in fives and tens; they march their black feathers past a blue pool;
they celebrate an old festival.
A spider is trying his webs, a pink bug sits on my hand washing his forelegs.
I might ask: Who are these people?
----Carl Sandburg
Yes, spring has come
This morning a nameless hill
Is shrouded in mist.
----Matsuo Basho
April’s Charms
When April scatters charms of primrose gold
Among the copper leaves in thickets old,
And singing skylarks from the meadows rise,
To twinkle like black stars in sunny skies;
When I can hear the small woodpecker ring
Time on a tree for all the birds that sing;
And hear the pleasant cuckoo, loud and long—
The simple bird that thinks two notes a song;
When I can hear the woodland brook, that could
Not drown a babe, with all his threatening mood;
Upon these banks the violets make their home,
And let a few small strawberry vlossoms come:
When I go forth on such a pleasant day,
One breath outdoors takes all my cares away;
It goes like heavy smoke, when flames take hold
Of wood that’s green and fill a grate with gold.
----William Henry Davies
this weary world
vanishes
into green leaves
----Susumu Takguchi
For winter’s rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
----Algernon Charles Swinburne
Spring
The air is like a butterfly
With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
And sings.
----Joyce Kilmer
‘Tis like the birthday of the world,
When earth was born in bloom;
The light is made of many dyes,
The air is all perfume:
There’s crimson buds, and white and blue,
The very rainbow showers
Have turned to blossoms where they fell,
And sown the earth with flowers.
----Thomas Hood
The world’s favorite season is the spring.
All things seem possible in May.
----Edwin Way Teale
April '11 - May '11