Spring conversation

Revival

by Luci Shaw

March. I am beginning
to anticipate a thaw. Early mornings
the earth, old unbeliever, is still crusted with frost
where the moles have nosed up their
cold castings, and the ground cover
in shadow under the cedars hasn't softened
for months, fogs layering their slow, complicated ice
around foliage and stem
night by night,

but as the light lengthens, preacher
of good news, evangelizing leaves and branches,
his large gestures beckon green
out of gray. Pinpricks of coral bursting
from the cotoneasters. A single bee
finding the white heather. Eager lemon-yellow
aconites glowing, low to the ground like
little uplifted faces. A crocus shooting up
a purple hand here, there, as I stand
on my doorstep, my own face drinking in heat
and light like a bud welcoming resurrection,
and my hand up, too, ready to sign on
for conversion.

"The sky has given over to its bitterness . . . "

Spring Storm
by William Carlos Williams

The sky has given over
its bitterness.
Out of the dark change
all day long
rain falls and falls
as if it would never end.
Still the snow keeps
its hold on the ground.
But water, water
from a thousand runnels!
It collects swiftly,
dappled with black
cuts a way for itself
through green ice in the gutters.
Drop after drop it falls
from the withered grass-stems
of the overhanging embankment.

Dear March - Come in!

Dear March - Come in - (1320) by Emily Dickinson Dear March - Come in - How glad I am - I hoped for you before - Put down your Hat - You must have walked - How out of Breath you are - Dear March, how are you, and the Rest - Did you leave Nature well - Oh March, Come right upstairs with me - I have so much to tell - I got your Letter, and the Birds - The Maples never knew that you were coming - I declare - how Red their Faces grew - But March, forgive me - And all those Hills you left for me to Hue - There was no Purple suitable - You took it all with you - Who knocks? That April - Lock the Door - I will not be pursued - He stayed away a Year to call When I am occupied - But trifles look so trivial As soon as you have come That blame is just as dear as Praise And Praise as mere as Blame -

Hello, Spring! "When daffodils begin to peer..."

The Winter's Tale Act IV, Scene II [When daffodils begin to peer]
by William Shakespeare

A Road near the Shepherd's Cottage. Enter Autolycus, singing.

When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh! The doxy over the dale,
Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.

The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,
With heigh! the sweet birds, O, how they sing!
Doth set my pugging tooth on edge;
For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.

The lark, that tirra-lyra chants,
With heigh! with heigh! the thrush and the jay,
Are summer songs for me and for my aunts,
While we lie tumbling in the hay.

love in a cord of wood

The Winter Wood Arrives

by Mary Oliver

I think
I could have
built a little house
to live in


with the single cord—
half seasoned, half not—
trucked into the
driveway and


tumbled down. But, instead,
friends came
and together we stacked it
for the long, cold days


that are—
maybe the only sure thing in the world—
coming soon.
How to keep warm


is always a problem,
isn't it?
Of course, there's love.
And there's prayer.


I don't belittle them,
and they have warmed me,
but differently,
from the heart outwards.


Imagine
what swirls of frost will cling
to the windows, what white lawns
I will look out on


as I rise from morning prayers,
as I remember love, that leaves yet never leaves,
as I go out into the yard
and bring the wood in


with struggling steps,
with struggling thoughts,
bundle by bundle,
to be burned.

Useful

In Art Rowanberry’s Barn

by Wendell Berry

In Art Rowanberry's barn, when Art's death
had become quietly a fact among
the other facts, Andy Catlett found
a jacket made of the top half
of a pair of coveralls after
the legs wore out, for Art
never wasted anything.
Andy found a careful box made
of woodscraps with a strap
for a handle; it contained
a handful of small nails
wrapped in a piece of newspaper,
several large nails, several
rusty bolts with nuts and washers,
some old harness buckles
and rings, rusty but usable,
several small metal boxes, empty,
and three hickory nuts
hollowed out by mice.
And all of these things Andy
put back where they had been,
for time and the world and other people
to dispense with as they might,
but not by him to be disprized.
This long putting away
of things maybe useful was not all
of Art's care-taking; he cared
for creatures also, every day
leaving his tracks in dust, mud,
or snow as he went about
looking after his stock, or gave
strength to lighten a neighbor's work.
Andy found a bridle made
of several lengths of baling twine
knotted to a rusty bit,
an old set of chain harness,
four horseshoes of different sizes,
and three hammerstones picked up
from the opened furrow on days
now as perfectly forgotten
as the days when they were lost.
He found a good farrier's knife,
an awl, a key to a lock
that would no longer open.