Ode to Spring

a poem

Ed. Note: I wrote this poem in March 2013.

You know the way the bee bumbles

zooming around the iris, daffodils, lilies

working so very hard to make honey happen

traveling back to the hive to deposit

the payload, never distracted,

never returning to where it found

that secret sweetness, that pale yellow-green

fuzz coating each little leg.

Bee pollenating a light purple flower. Photo by Josie Weiss on Unsplash

You know the way the ball bounces

past second base, towards the outfield

where the old guys with the most speed

and agility are placed, the seventy-year-old coach looking

for some advantage against a team of

sixty- and fifty-somethings. He’s

been here for over thirty seasons now,

because he believes diamonds are forever

a man’s best friend.

Senior baseball team, July 2017. Pops is kneeling on the far left, front row. Photo by Corinne Litchfield.

You know the way the jelly beans roll

around the middle of a bright pink plastic egg,

clacking against the side, sounding like the

castanets of a flamenco dancer spinning across

wooden floorboards, or so you imagine

as you’re only six, or seven, maybe eight,

and this year’s Easter basket is full

of all the chocolate and candies you like best

and maybe a fuzzy toy rabbit, or a yellow chick

that winds up and waddles tenuously across the carpet.

Children next to two Easter baskets, filled with candy and plastic eggs. Photo by Alan Rodriguez on Unsplash

You know the way spring is sprung:

through buds and shoots, through wind and water,

through bat and ball and bee and bean,

through each season, the promise to return.