This morning begins silently with little light –
like a river at its mountain source,
just a pool of water flowing downhill –
gathering its kind in increasing potential energy.
A raindrop, seed, a newborn in spring.
The title of this poem is an aphorism by William Stafford. more info
Again I watch the sun rise east
climbing over me, stationary in my home,
and setting, as always, to the west.
If at the North or South Poles,
that’s not so. No East. No West.
Spring came early this year – a day
early astronomically speaking, but weeks earlier relatively,
based on my garden’s buds and shoots.
Perhaps not North of me and not
the Southern Hemisphere, where spring is autumn.
It’s a month of Saturdays in retirement.
Or perhaps every day is now Wednesday,
since weekend days still seem somehow special
hanging off my calendar in another color.
Are there still 24 hours each day?
a thinning crescent as it slowly sweeps
past four bright morning planets – first Jupiter
then Mars, Saturn and Mercury, the crescent
points at them this morning of equinox.
Golden Saturn invisible to me – but there.
The house of spring is being closed.
The tulips, daffodils and irises have bloomed.
The lawn is a rain-soaked jungle green.
But everyone wants a beach house now.
Sun. Sand. No flowers or grass. Ocean.
Even the new plants in the garden
have had enough of the spring rain.
Winter lingered. True spring passed us by.
Warm, moist, green jumped to May summer.
Brushing rosemary and sage scents the air.
Robins brush their wings against window screens
attacking reflections of their own nesting instincts.
They started nesting in the pine tree
outside the bedroom window under our gaze.
Today, three blue eggs match the sky.
