Primavera

Spring has arrived.

It is no use your telling me to look at the calendar,

and saying that it is five good days to the twenty-first of March.

Is the year bound to obey the almanac makers?

O model of all egregious pedants!

Would you shackle Spring to times and seasons,

And catch her back by her long green skirt

Till the moment you have planned for her?

She has stolen a march this year, for certain.

Today, at sunrise, I saw a white-breasted nuthatch

running up the branch of the oak-tree

That was so broken by ice-storm last December,

And in the garden a pheasant was picking grains

Out of the manure cov'ring the garden beds.

There is a snowdrop up by the porch,

Shot clean through the tulip straw;

And the crows are all agog over my neighbor's pine trees.

It is a game of catch-who-catch-can with that green skirt then.

Even though, in your passion for order,

you bring about a snowstorm tomorrow,

It will not matter to me.

This morning, beyond the shadow of a doubt,

I saw the Spring.