Waiting for Spring

My children have been counting down the days until today, the first day of spring. "It's only a date on the calendar," I've warned them. "We're in the north now. It won't look like spring for quite some time."

Sure enough, it's just barely above freezing this morning. Our "spring" looks pretty much like the one William Carlos Williams describes below. Still, I'm like the kids. I can't help but be cheered by those definite little words under March 21: Spring Begins.

Are we finished waiting? Of course not.

But then, none of us ever really is.

Spring and All

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast -- a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines --

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches --

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind --

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

One by one objects are defined --
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance -- Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted they
grip down and begin to awaken

--William Carlos Williams


Lane Core celebrates the first day of spring with a collection of Emily Dickinson's spring poems.