Thursday, April 1, 2010

Easter

Today is the first day of national poetry month. Here's a Sally Van Doren poem about new beginnings:

Easter

Hyacinths come first

here, forsythia close

behind. Jonquils and

daffodils sprouting

up before we are ready

to receive the light of

April. The oaks' leaves

don't yet give us cover

and the sheared air

sears the cornea.

Could we hide

in the azalea bud?

Lilies wake us. We're

singing purple.

I've been walking around with a song playing in my head for the last week or so, from the musical Dames at Sea, called "Raining in My Heart." Partly it's been because of the weather, partly because of my mood. Today, though, I'm going to try some new things.

A few years ago, when we first kept hermit crabs as pets, one of them crawled out of its shell, dug a hole, and stayed there, still and dead-looking. I left it there for a few days, and we were all surprised to find, one morning, that it had put on a new shell and was crawling around. Although we eventually took to calling all the hermit crabs "Bob" after the 15 Animals song, we called that crab the Easter crab.

It's been a long winter. I'm going to come out of my shell. How about you?

8 comments:

edj3 said...

Today I see blue sky out my office window, and actually didn't use my wiper blades once on the commute to work. Plus I needed my sunglasses the last 15 minutes. Talk about a mood lifter. I'm daring to hope the ground dries out, our floors end up basically OK and we can repair our windows without them turning into water features again.

FreshHell said...

Yes! We are expecting a couple of days of weather in the 80's! I'm hoping to do some work in the garden this weekend though I don't have anything yet to plant. I might have to rememdy that. I did discover hellebores growing in our little forest. I planted three of them a few years back and this is the only one that's flowered. So, it gives me hope.

edj3 said...

Oh and I meant to comment that I read Sally Van Doren as Silly Van Doren at first glance. And that made me giggle until I realized I'd mis-read it.

Anonymous said...

I don't exactly know why, but I am crabbier than ever these days. But perhaps that really does just mean I'm coming out of my shell.

Jeanne said...

Yay for no more rain! I was walking around outside today--without a jacket!

Jeanne said...

Readersguide, coming out of a shell can be uncomfortable!

Ana S. said...

I so love the line "We're singing purple."

Jeanne said...

Nymeth, I find that line evocative, too. I wish I were expert enough at using blogger to get the indentations to stay in so the poem looks like the printed version--that line is more deeply indented, which adds something.