Springing Thoughts

Are you waiting as anxiously as I am for the first daffodils to appear? I decided to shorten the wait with some photos from past years and a poem by one of my favorite poets, Robert Herrick.

To Daffodils

by Robert Herrick

Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain’d his noon.
Stay, stay
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the evensong;

And, having pray’d together, we
Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.

We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away
Like to the summer’s rain;
Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,
Ne’er to be found again.

I have to admit though, my very favorite poet is Ted Kooser. His simple images and fine phrasing paint images not soon forgotten. Spring Plowing is just one of his many fine works:

West of Omaha the freshly plowed fields

steam in the night like lakes.
The smell of the earth floods over the roads.
The field mice are moving their nests
to the higher ground of fence rows,
the old among them crying out to the owls
to take them all. The paths in the grass
are loud with the squeak of their carts.
They keep their lanterns covered.

Who cannot feel the plight of those mice as they scurry out of the way of danger?

But right now I am waiting, waiting, waiting for a day like Billy Collins describes in his poem, Today.

    If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

Wishing you all a spring filled with daffodils, field mice and a sky-blue world.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.