Category: Spring Songs

Every May I wait for it to call me.
“It’s time. Come now,” it beckons.
It has to call; I don’t normally pass it
in my daily travels. But one day every May
something inside me hears it: “Come now.”
When I get there, it is laughing colors
and it tosses pink and white dogwood petals
in welcome, and robins stroll on the lawn.
Over there, by the sidewalk, is a tree
whose pink flowers look like carnations,
and doesn’t it make you fall silent to gaze
at the red of these Japanese maple leaves?
I float from one corner to another as if
I were one of these tender blossoms
waltzing with the wind. I cannot tell you
how or why it happens. The only answer
I know is love.

Teach us your sweet simplicity.
Let your song be clear and strong.
This is the moment for which
you were born after all, the now
in which you unfold your grace
and make your mark on the eternity
of our hearts, so that we, too
may sing the joyous Yes with you
until the last star fades
from the deep and infinite sky.

The panoply of green Is the first thing to strike you.
Almost every living thing wears a version of the hue.
But step into this springtime scene, with its play
of light and breeze, and suddenly the sight of it
seems but a stage for the all-enveloping chorus
now filling the air, sung by a choir of countless frogs
and birds, their notes falling from trees, rising from reeds
and weeds and grasses and water, wrapping you
in its exuberant, affirmative joy, convincing you
that, no matter what, life goes on, and on, and on.

Ever have one of those days when
everything went just right? It’s kinda
woo-woo, doncha find? Reminds me
of old Dr. Hook lyrics about how
when everything went right paranoia
tried to seep in. I’m not used to
having everything fall so perfectly
in place. It was better than I had hoped
and more than I could have imagined.
Everywhere I looked, things seemed
more beautiful than when I looked
before, and nice surprises appeared
like spring violets and forget-me-nots,
making me feel new again, and eager,
and just plain glad. To quote myself,
“Every now and then you get a moment
that makes all the rest of them worth it.”
It was one of those moments today.
All day. Maybe it’s the sunshine.
Maybe it’s just because. Or bunches
of them, like the ones outside the window,
all emerald and gold now and dancing.
All I know is that I am new again,
and amazed, and humbled, and glad.

Amen

Had it not been for you, Mom,
I may have gone through the world
blind to its beauty. I may have missed
the tenderness of a blossom’s petals,
the wonder of its hues and form.
The songs of birds and of breezes
rustling through silky springtime leaves
may have been nothing more
than a background sound, hardly heard.
I may not have noticed how rain
can soothe, how thunder can thrill,
how dew sparkles on the grass
like diamonds, had you not taken
the time to show me, and to whisper
that it all sings the love of the Yes
as surely as a mother croons to her child.

Even in this world awash with seeming madness,
the song of the Yes goes forth, its melody coaxing
birds to mate, flowers to bloom, lovers to embrace
each other in joy. It sprinkles bright stars in the sky
as a reminder that no night is wholly without light,
that worlds beyond our knowing dance in perfect order
in response to the symphony of its infinite love.

Even we, who sleepwalk through clouded dreams,
who mistakenly count ourselves as life’s victims,
whose confusion gives rise to hostility and pain,
even we are wonderfully made of its song
and can wake and claim our power to create,
to imagine, to build and dance and love and sing.
For even in this world awash with seeming madness,
the song of the Yes sings its soaring symphony
of endless, perfect, omnipresent love.

The south hill is covered in bright fluffy green
and baby ferns giggle and dance in the rain.
In the branches and brambles, birds’ nests hide,
holding downy hatchlings too young even to wonder
where they are and what happened.
What happened, indeed!
All at once it seemed, from silence and nothing,
color and song rose into the air, and I got to stand here
in the spring rain with wild violets and celandine poppies,
knowing no more than the baby birds know,
but old enough now to know wonder.

Four baby robins were born,
their turquoise eggs bursting open
to reveal yellow beaks and big eyes
not yet open and the fuzziest down
barely covering their little pink bodies.

On the hillside, little ferns poked out
to begin unfurling their curled-up leaves.
and at the woods’ edge, dogwood danced
in the spring sky, breathing the fragrance
of the lilac, just opening her petals.

Bright dandelions waltzed with violets.
Wild forget-me-nots came to take in the view.
The ancient trees put forth their leaves,
and popcorn ball globes of white blossoms
partied on the lawn at the base of the hill.

This is what sustains me through the winter,
the dream of this. Yet even my best dreams pale
now that spring is finally here, alive
with new life, feeding my soul, singing
the blessing of wondrous this day.

To live in a world where flowers bloom,
despite all harshness, against all odds,
is the same as tasting music, as breathing
the dawn. Every petal is a promise
whispering Yes into the caves of the heart,
proof that hope is never in vain, that
the unspeakable longings of the soul
are known and met with love
and unfathomable beauty.