POEM - Spring, Today!

Rain tries to assuage the winter pain
whose edge is blunted, arranged, and splintered,
So even the grainy hardness of ice is made soft,
While tips of stoic tree limbs that are held aloft
Take on the shape of human hands -
pleading against sky’s cool field of blue,
Up toward a light that tiptoes in on the back of the cold,
Furtively, so deep, so despairing and old -
Now it seems bolder, more nascent and gold.

And the birds! Oh, the birds
These colorful clowns of the air,
In cameo roles, appear everywhere,
Unaware of what transpires below,
Far too embroiled in their own dramas to know,
As they make themselves known to me and then as they go,
They take center stage for a curtsy or bow:
The stern hollow knock of the woodpecker’s beak.
The sweet loopy voice as holy cardinal speaks.
The spastic brown flurry of effeminate sparrows.
The watchful stare of stony faced crows:
These are yawning signs that everything in and around me, grows.