POETRY_FRIDAY

SOME OF OUR FAVORITE POEMS...
WE HOPE YOU ENJOY THEM!

POEMS FOR THE MONTH OF MARCH

On the Vernal Equinox, around March 21st, in Sacramento, California, Northern
Hemisphere, Earth,
we have around 12 Hours of Daylight and 12 Hours of Nighttime.

"The air is like a butterfly
With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
And sings."
-   Joyce Kilmer, Spring

"The afternoon is bright,
with spring in the air,
a mild March afternoon,
with the breath of April stirring,
I am alone in the quiet patio
looking for some old untried illusion -
some shadow on the whiteness of the wall
some memory asleep
on the stone rim of the fountain,
perhaps in the air
the light swish of some trailing gown."
-   Antonio Machado, 1875-1939
  Selected Poems, # 3, Translated by Alan S. Trueblood

"Each leaf,
each blade of grass
vies for attention.

Even weeds
carry tiny blossoms
to astonish us."
- Marianne Poloskey, Sunday in Spring

"March is a month of considerable frustration - it is so near spring and yet across a
great deal
of the country the weather is still so violent and changeable that outdoor activity in
our
yards seems light years away."
-   Thalassa Cruso

"The sun is brilliant in the sky but its warmth does not reach my face.
The breeze stirs the trees but leaves my hair unmoved.
The cooling rain will feed the grass but will not slake my thirst.
It is all inches away but further from me than my dreams."
-   M. Romeo LaFlamme, The First of March

"I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze."
- William Wordsworth, Daffodils

"Last day of Winter,
leafless walnut trees--
form is emptiness.

First day of Spring,
clear sky to Mt. Shasta--
emptiness is form."
- Michael P. Garofalo, Cuttings: March

"Equal dark, equal light
Flow in Circle, deep insight
Blessed Be, Blessed Be
The transformation of energy!
So it flows, out it goes
Three-fold back it shall be
Blessed Be, Blessed Be
The transformation of energy!"
-   Night An'Fey, Transformation of Energy

"March is the month of expectation,
The things we do not know,
The Persons of Prognostication
Are coming now.
We try to sham becoming firmness,
But pompous joy
Betrays us, as his first betrothal
Betrays a boy."
-   Emily Dickinson, XLVIII

"The first day of spring was once the time for taking the young virgins into the fields,
there in dalliance
to set an example in fertility for nature to follow. Now we just set the clocks an hour
ahead and change
the oil in the crankcase."
-   E.B. White, "Hot Weather," One Man's Meat, 1944

"Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush."
-   Doug Larson

"The March wind roars
Like a lion in the sky,
And makes us shiver
As he passes by.

When winds are soft,
And the days are warm and clear,
Just like a gentle lamb,
Then spring is here."
-   Author Unknown

"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough."
-   A. E. Houseman, Shropshire Lad

Spring is nature's way of saying, "Let's party!"
-   Robin Williams

"All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair
The bees are stirring, birds are on the wing,
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring."
-   Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell,
     and the splendor of winter had passed out of sight,
The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger
     than dreams that fulfill us in sleep with delight;
The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops
     and branches that glittered and swayed
Such wonders and glories of blossom like snow
     or of frost that outlightens all flowers till it fade
That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land,
     nor the night than the day, nor the day than the night,
Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring:
     such mirth had the madness and might in thee made,
March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms
      that enkindle the season they smite."
-   Algernon C. Swinburne, March: An Ode

Gardening and Trees

"Today is the day when bold kites fly,
When cumulus clouds roar across the sky.
When robins return, when children cheer,
When light rain beckons spring to appear.

Today is the day when daffodils bloom,
Which children pick to fill the room,
Today is the day when grasses green,
When leaves burst forth for spring to be seen."

-   Robert McCracken, Spring

"Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees."

-   Robert Frost, A Prayer in Spring

"This hill
crossed with broken pines and maples
lumpy with the burial mounds of
uprooted hemlocks (hurricane
of ’38) out of their
rotting hearts generations rise
trying once more to become
the forest

just beyond them
tall enough to be called trees
in their youth like aspen a bouquet
of young beech is gathered

they still wear last summer’s leaves
the lightest brown almost translucent
how their stubbornness has decorated
the winter woods"

-   Grace Paley, A Walk in March

"The cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter,
The green field sleeps in the sun;
The oldest and youngest
Are at work with the strongest;
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!

Like an army defeated
The snow hath retreated,
And now doth fare ill
On the top of the bare hill;
The Plowboy is whooping-anon-anon:
There's joy in the mountains;
There's life in the fountains;
Small clouds are sailing,
The rain is over and gone!"
-   William Wordsworth, March

"The spring is coming by a many signs;
The trays are up, the hedges broken down
That fenced the haystack, and the remnant shines
Like some old antique fragment weathered brown.
And where suns peep, in every sheltered place,
The little early buttercups unfold
A glittering star or two - till many trace
The edges of the blackthorn clumps in gold.
And then a little lamb bolts up behind
The hill, and wags his tail to meet the yoe;
And then another, sheltered from the wind,
Lies all his length as dead - and lets me go
Close by, and never stirs, but basking lies,
With legs stretched out as though he could not rise."

-   John Clare, Young Lambs

"For in spite of the snapdragons and the duty millers and the cherry blossoms, it was
always winter."

-   Janet Frame

"Ahh, the wide almond groves in full white flower
Stunning in the morning sun.
Old naked Winter in his garb of grays and browns has run.
Forsythia blooms come and go in the blink of a yellow Eye,
Then, suddenly, mysteriously, Green erupts; and we sigh."

-   Michael P. Garofalo, Cuttings

"It was cold and windy, scarcely the day
to take a walk on that long beach
Everything was withdrawn as far as possible,
indrawn: the tide far out, the ocean shrunken,
seabirds in ones or twos.
The rackety, icy, offshore wind
numbed our faces on one side;
disrupted the formation
of a lone flight of Canada geese;
and blew back the low, inaudible rollers
in upright, steely mist."

-   Elizabeth Bishop, The End of March

"It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold:
when it is summer
in the light, and winter in the shade."

-   Charles Dickens

"No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn."

-   Hal Borland

"A light exists in Spring
Not present in the year
at any other period
When March is scarcely here."
-   Emily Dickinson

"You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;
I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.
As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown,
I have a world apart that is not among men."

- Li Bai

"If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant."

-   Anne Bradstreet