Three poems
for spring, as National Poetry Month continues
The ramps are just starting to poke up through the ground, the great blue heron and the loons have returned to the shores of the lake, and just yesterday the frogs started their spring chorus. So, some poems for spring.
PICTURE YOUR PLACE IN THE SPRINGTIME1
Imagine all the ways it can be
all the ways it is unfurling
all the ways it is known to you.
Allow dreaming in spring
to fill you up with hope
and the sort of longing that reaches
across time to pull you forward.
Watch spring snow fall in wet drops
curtains of patience for change
reminding you that things can’t be rushed
if you really desire transformation.
Accept the pace that is—
Transformation is always afoot
and is, in fact,
happening this very moment.2
TEACHING THE WORLD TO SURVIVE
When your healing is imperfect
it’s easy to beat yourself up
or knock yourself down
but beating yourself up
is a fight you can’t win
and knocking yourself down
is a sure way to stay there.
Instead, take your imperfect healing
and hold it softly, cradled
like a delicate speckled egg—beautiful yet breakable,
powerful because of that vulnerability.
Hold it gently, offer a safe place,
a place it can live inside you
nestled as only imperfect things can nestle,
just there, against your heart, keeping time
with the pulse, life-force reminding you
healing isn’t something you’re graded on.
Healing is any wound, stitched and tended
becoming a scar equipped to share stories
that teach the world to survive.
RAINY DAYS IN SPRING
Rainy days in spring
are for walking quietly
through gently falling water
are for well-thumbed books
read in early afternoon
are for tea steeping
while drops drum the roof
are for land and sky
working together
through mess and necessity
to keep the world turning
ice and mud eventually coming
to an agreement that’s green
with potential for growing
with potential for blooming
with potential for feeding
weary souls wandering
on rainy days in spring.
Inspired by a prompt from Writing the Wild.
This last stanza is from a poem in Cold Spring Hallelujah.