DID SOMEONE SAY IT WAS SPRING?

DID SOMEONE SAY IT WAS SPRING?

Here in northern South Carolina this morning, it was at the freezing mark. Up in the Northeast they are suffering their fourth nor'easter in a month. Though the vernal equinox happened this past week, you couldn't prove it by the weather - it's crazy all over the country. (Yep, Mr Trump, there's no global warming effect.)
I found this poem in April last year, on the now defunct The Writer's Almanac. The cadence of the poem reminded me of that of one of my favorites, Barbara Frietchie, by John Greenleaf Whittier. John Greenleaf Whittier. As a kid, I was intrigued by multi-syllabled triple names like his and Robert Louis Stevenson's, and I loved their poems that danced - as this one does.

Greeting to Spring (Not Without Trepidation)

by Robert Lax

Over the back of the Florida basker,
over the froth of the Firth of Forth,
Up from Tahiti and Madagascar,
Lo, the sun walks north.

The first bright day makes sing the slackers
While leaves explode like firecrackers,
The duck flies forth to greet the spring
And sweetly municipal pigeons sing.

Where the duck quacks, where the bird sings,
We will speak of past things.

Come out with your marbles, come out with your Croup,
The grass is as green as a Girl Scout troop;
In the Mall the stone acoustics stand
Like a listening ear for the Goldman band.

At an outside table, where the sun’s bright glare is,
We will speak of darkened Paris.

Meanwhile, like attendants who hasten the hoofs
Of the ponies who trot in the shadow of roofs,
The sun, in his running, will hasten the plan
Of plants and fishes, beast and man.

We’ll turn our eyes to the sogging ground
And guess if the earth is cracked or round.

Over the plans of the parties at strife,
Over the planes in the waiting north,
Over the average man and his wife,
Lo, the sun walks forth!