Another Spring Poem
The lawn is filling with tiny flowers, almost
invisible like the night’s first dozen stars:
violet and sorrel, clover and strawberry,
and the white corollas no bigger than commas
I have never been able to name.
I don’t know why it’s taken so long to notice them
or how many days they might have been here.
Spring has surprised me once again,
as if an orchestra had assembled in the living room
while I fiddled with bills or read the news.
Even the mushrooms — squirrel-bitten,
glistening with slime, like eggs
half-risen in the maple duff — insist
on a kind of awe if I’m still enough to listen.
Soon the yard will be crowded with lilac and dogwood,
the fat half-dollars of the dandelions,
and there will be no more mistaking
something for nothing. Beauty and the need
for beauty will be full-blown, insistemt
as the sun rising right now
in this glory of pink and parting clouds.
~ Charles Rafferty