Spring Trances

The snails have found the inside of a Granny Goose

Hawaian-style potato chips,

the clipper ship on its wrapper

headed out from the islands

on a wind-swept main.

The last storms passed now, turning

to snow in the High Sierra:

they baste in their ointments deep in the tall grass,

cool among shadows and cellophane.

The sparrows and linnets have gone mad at dawn,

trilling and swooping in the branches

and ditchweed, flashing a plume

then diving; a racket

we've woken to for weeks, far too long

before the sun turns Scotch broom and the poppies to flame.

We drift through these days

half in trance from fatigue.

At evening, as the streaks of light dissolve,

we watch the boy walk home,

hatband and uniform wet from the game.

The smell of dust and sweat and the oil in his mitt

burns deep into the tissue of him.

Buffeted, drunk, wounded -

his pretty nerves bloom,

a school of minnows just under the skin.

The wind carries music up from the street,

a skewer running through him

that he slowly turns on in the scented dark.

AugustKleinzahler

But these things also

But these things also are Spring's -

On banks by the roadside the grass

Long-dead that is greyer now

Than all the Winter it was;

The shell of a little snail bleached

In the grass; chip of flint, and mite

Of chalk; and the small birds' dung

In splashes of purest white:

All the white things a man mistakes

For earliest violets

Who seeks through Winter's ruins

Something to pay Winter's debts,

While the North blows, and starling flocks

By chattering on and on

Keep their spirits up in the mist,

And Spring's here, Winter's not gone.

Edward Thomas

The Watchers

By the ford at the town's edge

Horse and carter rest:

The carter smokes on the bridge

Watching the water press in swathes about his horse's chest.

From the inn one watches, too,

In the room for visitors

That has no fire, but a view

And many cases of stuffed fish, vermin, and kingfishers.

Edward Thomas