I was tooling around at the Poetry Foundation for this week’s Poetry Friday, and what to my wandering eye should appear but the perfect poem for this week’s weather! (Thanks, Karen, for pointing me to Poetry Foundation. As Fr. V. says: Warning: Addiction Level HIGH!)

This week has been one of escape from all things indoors. It has been a week of admiring the in-town daffodils and knowing that mine aren’t too far behind. We’ve jumped and explored and gotten our fingers dirty. In short, it’s been fabulous.

So, with that, I bring you my find of the week, with all the enthusiasm of one who read it and nodded and all but started reciting it out loud to the fussy baby in my lap.

Cold Spring
by Lawrence Raab
The last few gray sheets of snow are gone,
winter’s scraps and leavings lowered
to a common level. A sudden jolt
of weather pushed us outside, and now
this larger world once again belongs to us.
I stand at the edge of it, beside the house,
listening to the stream we haven’t heard
since fall, and I imagine one day thinking
back to this hour and blaming myself
for my worries, my foolishness, today’s choices
having become the accomplished
facts of change, accepted
or forgotten. The woods are a mangle
of lines, yet delicate, yet precise,
when I take the time to look closely.
If I’m not happy it must be my own fault.
At the edge of the lawn my wife
bends down to uncover a flower, then another.
The first splurge of crocuses.
And for a moment the sweep and shudder
of the wind seems indistinguishable
from the steady furl of water
just beyond her.


Check out the rest of the Poetry Friday roundup over at The Well-Read Child.