Pushing Spring
If I were to decorate the winter trees,
arms gangly gray in a crooked freeze,
with leaves of mint sugar and paper mache flowers,
how long do you think it would take?
I would need ladders and pulleys and twining to tie
and large canopies, for the birds that went by
would dive bomb my leaves and drag off my flowers
for perfect sized, bright colored nests.
I would need moon drops for sleeping
and hammocks for reading and backpacks for keeping
supplies (such as cookies of lemon and afternoon tea).
My eyes would need sunshades in white.
If I started five years ago, I'd still be working
even if every elephant from every circus
quit their careers to help me to tie blossoms
we'd still only finish a patch.
I would be tired and burnt by the sun
and the elephants would quit because 'it wasn't no fun'.
Even though I'd pay them in peanuts and cheese.
Trunk to tail they'd stomp off for home.
I'd look back on tree limbs in color for miles
and see all the flowers in wet, soppy piles
for the rain would break through the low cloud cover
and start on a job of her own.
Defeated and gray in my mood like the trees
I'd fall to my knees in the rainbow debris
and close up my eyes, fall to sleep patiently.
Mint sugar leaves on my lips.
When I awoke, from just one night's earth turning
I'd find that the spring's midnight oil had been burning.
Tips of tree limbs with blooms near to exploding.
In one night the world wakes up sweet.
With all of this knowledge comes patience, endurance
to wait for the earth and her natural occurrence.
I'll save my mint sugar for julep this summer
when the flowers give way to their thirst.
Copyright © Tatyana Carney | Year Posted 2005
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