Literary Hook: A poem to help welcome spring

By Christine Swanberg
Author and Poet

Isn’t it good to have spring here at last?

Of course, we all know another snow might yet greet us some unsuspecting day, but for the most part, it’s spring.

March brings snow crocuses and the beginning of daffodils and tulips. By April, many birds have returned, along with other garden creatures.

The following poem was first published in the collection Who Walks Among the Trees with Charity, Wind Publications, 2005.

April Morning

I love to wake without alarm,

Open the window by the bed,

Find April arriving, the garden

Thriving with crocus and cardinal.

Now a speckled dove traverses

Nubby, sheered prairie grass.

Sparrows nest in blue spruce.

Inside, wind rustling white curtains.

Outside, children with backpacks

Trundling off to school, where

At least one teacher will show kindness

To that little soldier who finds

This thick spring day, well,

Just a bit too much. The tiniest

Black and white bees burrow

Little volcanoes around tree roots.

Good neighbor Tom says they’re harmless.

Good for the garden, he tells me.

Why, they eat pests beneath dark soil—

Ones you didn’t even know were there.

You have known places dark

As Illinois soil, where the ice overstayed

Its welcome. Who hasn’t who walks

Among the trees with charity?

You too have lived largely

Like the old magnolia, its pink saucers

Fragrant as paradise,

The good bees buzzing.

From the April 20-26, 2011 issue

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