Spring Things

Spring is officially here, of course. The equinox and all. And there are some signs around here in Hudson, Ohio, that spring is at least considering a return.

Though, this morning, I did have to wear my Damn Winter Coat to the coffee shop. Temps in the mid-20s.

Here are two signs I've noticed the past couple of days:

• Our new sump pump is sighing about, oh, every twenty minutes or so and creating Lake Dyer out in our ivy near the house. I mean, I'm glad that water is not now doing what it did for the first twenty years we lived here--form fetid pools in the basement. But the output from the Sighing Sump is right outside my study window--and, upstairs at night, I can hear it, reminding me of Lake Dyer, and in its sighs I can almost hear a question: What are you going to do about me now?
• The green tips of our day lilies are peeking up through the earth. Testing the air. Measuring the sun. Asking themselves: Dare we?

I would advise them to wait. I know that I would--wait, that is--were I a day lily.

edges of our lilies

I love day lilies, by the way. I've written about them here before--more than once. As I've said, they remind me of summer (my favorite season as a boy--and later, too). Summer vacations from school--as student and, later, as teacher. Gifts that I unwrapped every day with gratitude.

Spring does not delight everyone. Edna St. Vincent Millay has a dark poem about the arrival of spring, a poem that I will paste below. Perhaps spring will read it (surely spring follows this blog!?!) and will effloresce in a fabulous way to demonstrate to Ms. Millay the error of her ways?

BTW: I memorized this one a couple of years ago--and this morning, in the dark, on my walk to the coffee shop, I mumbled it, hoping to coax spring into being a little more ... assertive!

Spring

To what purpose, April, do you return again?

Beauty is not enough.

You can no longer quiet me with the redness

Of little leaves opening stickily.

I know what I know.

The sun is hot on my neck as I observe

The spikes of the crocus.

The smell of the earth is good.

It is apparent that there is no death.

But what does that signify?

Not only under ground are the brains of men

Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself

Is nothing,

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,

April

Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.