Spring comes
Quietly--
Not with the bleating of lambs or
The tweeting of birds or the
Beating of butterfly wings
Spring comes
Silently--
Celtic through the Neolithic stones,
Unheralded by peering shadow-seekers
Rummaging around on the Second of
February, and unannounced by a
Banner on the front page of the
National Enquirer…
Unpresaged by pregnant April
Showers,
Spring comes--
Alive
Nota bene: This is one of the few pieces of juvenilia I have preserved. It was written when I was at college (the University of Florida), in 1979, when I was in the English Department High Honors Seminar. We had an assignment to write a poem about Spring, but to try not to fall into the usual cliches. I thought it might be fun to mention some of those cliches ironically. We had one-on-one tutorials with a number of well-known novelists and poets; one of mine was with the poet Richard Eberhart. He told me he liked this poem and that it was a good one, so I have kept it these four decades.
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