wild things

Every spring, we throw ourselves

unceremoniously into the birthing world, abandon

all remnants of the cold dark snow. We are sun-drunk

and terribly deprived. We give little shrieks

of joy when the croci appear at the edge of the woods,

much as we did when the snowflakes first began to fall, the cyclical

nature of the world giving us just enough time to forget.

We race each other out the school doors,

tumbling out onto the bright pavement in our haste

to be the first one to see the clear blue sky.

Our jackets lay       abandoned on their hooks. The sun is out;

we are once again wild things. And everyone else

in the state, it seems, has had the same thought -

the sidewalks are blooming with children

who stare awestruck at the petals sprouting in the concrete cracks,

elders who sit on porches and wave hello

to every sort of creature passing by. The earth smells of gladness 

and rain. The birdsong in the trees is incessant; crows seem to float

in the space between the trees and the wispy white clouds;

the deep sweet freshness of the new-made air

leaves us tipsy at street corners, gulping and desperate for more. 

A poet

kneels in the grass in her rollerblades, palms up to the bright bright sky.

She knows the day is ending. She drinks in,

endlessly, the impermanence of warmth. The breeze is shifting,

bringing cooler scents to the horizon, slowing,

carrying with it always the unwanted passage of time.

But for now it is sunny, and beautiful, and blue,

and as it is every spring,

there will be another day.