The First Spring

A Sonnet for New Days

As May begins, here is a sonnet from this past week—the end of April.

The blossoming of the trees this spring has been spectacular, first the mesquite’s heavy catkins among the new green leaves, and the catclaw acacias—their white flower clusters always full of bees—and now the palo verdes with their ethereal clouds of pale yellow.

The End of April

Whenever I step out of doors I find
a half a hundred scents upon the wing.
The end of April is ablaze with spring
as though it were the first of all its kind—
The first of rising sap, of leaflets vined
on old-bark branches where new blossoms swing,
the first time bees found blooms where pollens cling
to legs and stripes while they went mad and dined
on the first nectars of the first spring’s flush.
This is the wisdom of the new sap’s rush,
of petals’ swirl from sudden, fragile bud,
of bees’ conclave amid the mighty flood
of fragrances that stir the weary blood
as if we watched the world’s first breathless hush.

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