It’s quite cold and very windy – not so tempting to go outside as I was reminded when I went out with an armful of boxes etc for the recycling bin. Things keep getting blown against the house and the fire siren has gone off several times, no doubt for limbs and wires down.
Perhaps spring will really come on May Day this year.
(See below for the photographic evidence)
Yesterday, I wrote of bright daffodils,
shining and bobbing in the April breeze.
This morning’s window held a waking view of
fog I thought, until I donned my glasses.
The whiteness outside the glass, it was snow
not a dusting to remember winter
in early April but inches covered
the garden, marble walk, and two lane road.
How trusting we are, thinking spring has come
to sit by us til summer visits late
but she’s a fickle one, both hot and cold
we’re melted and frozen in her dancing.
We laugh as she laughs, we the shivering,
clinging to the warmth of our yesterdays.
Compare yesterday’s photos with these, taken this morning. For more, go here or click on the first image:
The gloriosity of a spring day,
brilliant of sky and returning spirit
is a powerful force, powerful force,
but when it comes to yearly daffodils
the green tips tarrying just above ground
then leaping upward and above the mould
standing stoic above the last March snow
and shaking off the unexpected frost
They burst forth one, two, three then twenty more
and like a smile across a somber day
lighting the sullen rainy afternoon
golden yellows so incandescent their
passing cannot be mourned nor forgotten
as summer lays her green to all the world.
Yup, April First, the land of fly-offering trout fishermen and poets. I have been listening to the Yale course on Modern Poetry and enjoying the odd mix of mostly American poets who converged on London and published their works while hanging out together. I left the radio and iPhone off this morning, hoping to think of a poem’s start on the drive in. Nothing really came to mind or stuck so I ended up reciting the Frost poems that I have, mostly, by heart. So here’s my first NaPoWriMo offering for April, likely to be revised later or later on:
This morning’s drive, spent with Frost and meter,
the miles passing with changes of season:
winter, dark and seductive and stealth,
sneaking in with quiet telltale whisper
tales of trees and boys and earthly loving
living in a world of storm and wisdom
knowledge scraped up from hard pan New England
the land rocky, hills greening with the spring
returning, returning like a love lost
and met again by chance at a corner
where life and history meet every day.
We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.
