Unpresaged Poems | Examples

Primo Vere - Spring Comes

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.