It’s Poetry Friday in National Poetry Month. It’s been a busy month for me, entertaining good friends and family, chasing my sweet almost three-year-old grandson, celebrating my husband’s 70th, protests and good trouble work. I have missed being here. Today’s Poetry Friday host is Heidi at my juicy little universe. She’s got some Earth Day love, protesting, and poetry, along with the next line in our progressive poem. Thank you, Heidi.
Springtime in the desert is so magical this week, I’ve written about it the last two days in a row for my Verselove poems.
“Things to Do: Write a Poem” with Barb Edler
Things to Do Today
- Give a new name to springtime in the Mojave, for there is no word for this special desert season. [It’s not like springtime in the Midwest, which springs to a summer of growth and an autumn of harvest. Springtime in the desert is its own sweet thing, shouting out to the world before it springs into the fire of searing summer.]
Here’s why our spring needs a new name:
-
- The juniper and creosote scents drift on the breeze
- The red-tailed hawk rises, watches for a meal
- The tiny green star inside the blossom of the strawberry hedgehog cactus shouts, Look at me
- The purple of the Mojave aster salutes this day
- The bees make merry
- The sparrows—Brewer’s, white-crowned, black-throated—hold a concert
- The phainopepla enjoys the sparrow orchestra, while munching mistletoe berries
- The hummingbirds feast on flowers
- Grandfather Nolina, like Father Time, passes the dried torch of last year to the next generation, where bees dance around the new fresh blossom
- The purple desert chia flowers wait to dry out and nourish others
- So many shades of green
- The quail’s wings shake and shiver
- The apricot mallow flower holds a dozen shades of coral
- My feet crunch sand to ground me in this place
- And more and more and more
2. Write a poem
3. That will do
Seasons in Syllables with Larin Wade
Springtime By Any Other Name
What
To call
this magic–
where color, scent,
and gentle blossoms
hold sway in the breeze of
perfection, and greens abound
‘til they dry into brown season?
What can one call this sweet enchantment,
which changes daily as fresh buds open
and others take leave until next year’s bloom?
The ladderback woodpecker sips sweet
nectar with the hummingbird, both
share the wealth of this spring dawn.
Shall I call it “Birds-sing-
buds-burst-forth” season?
Or shall I just
savor this
one fine
day?
