Ode to a Northern Spring

By M. Kelly Peach

Emboldened with warm breezes, the buds appear. They are shy

And fatten from branches, long for leafy leaping of green.

But hold, at tip of stem and axil, a little longer with sacred ply

Of tight, grim perules and protect, from last gasping, obscene

And frigid wintry winds, their fuses of inner tenderness.

Wait another week and watch for final banishment of freezing rains

From balmy sunbeams. Then, loosen scales and sly, careful peek 

Out each viridescent tip to find it’s safe and, with sap-rich eagerness,

Burst free as brightly feathered songs. Their longed-for strains

Are winged and trilling, though it is of Winter’s death they bespeak. 

The golden life-giver circles high, stays longer in cerulean sky

Until wearied, then seeks its rest under gray blanket of sateen.

Come the gentle rains, they croon their pattering lullaby

For every leaf slaking their long thirst from these tears, pure and clean.

Each drop a new-life liquid through the litterfall of forest wilderness

Filtering down to the filaments of endless fine roots, absorbent veins,

For innumerable sprouts and shoots surging up through the soil to seek  

The sultry light, the limpid air. The early risers, with fragile meagerness

And each a thin striving upwards through wetted loam, are the verdant gains  

Of later, prettiest trillium and prayers of jacks-in-the pulpit still infant weak.

Spring, bathed with warm showers, is born and, like a foal with legs awry,

Stumbles a step or two then quickly gains strength and soon is seen

Frisking through fields and forest and each step is a dandelion thereby.

Summer waits inchoate and watches from behind a willow’s leafy screen

As Spring, with each day, grows more lovely. Clad in the pallid sheerness

Of a gown woven from rootlets finer than spider silk, she is enthroned and reigns

Beneficent over all of nature. June comes and Summer is ready to speak

To the queen. He approaches, is stunned by her regal beauty, lithe slenderness.

Jade eyes meet deep brown, they smile in wonderment and love, immanent, obtains.

Too soon, Summer melds from the verdured death, she, each year, must seek.

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M. Kelly Peach, lives in the wild & beautiful Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He reads & collects books, bakes, & facilitates Ink Society Meetings for a local writing group. Bluesky is @mkellypeach.bsky.social & author's website is mkellypeach.com. His work has appeared in:  Alien Buddha Press (poetry chapbook: Please, Do Not Tap on the Glass) & Translucent Eyes Press (horror novella: The Death of Tintagiles Death; horror novel: The Whore: or Of Bureaucracy). Words are forthcoming in: Writing Space Press & Ghostlight: The Magazine of Terror.