Sing to Spring
(Fade in on open field, where members of the local Women’s Chorus are engaged in their annual ritual of welcoming the new season. Dressed like milkmaids; everyone thinks they are a little nutty.)
Amorous buxom choristers, dancing everywhere
Fearless, guileless, heaving inspirations, juggling knowledge and
lascivious, mature natures…
Pendulum quickens; rhythmic sashay turns vibrant windmill…
(Two hours later, at a coffee shop, the event concludes with these time-honored words…)
Yum! Zabaglione!
© 2015 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Yes, my mother told me that, one fine spring day, a group of her friends from a local women’s barbershop group got together and did indeed “Sing to the Spring.” Of course, it didn’t involve a coffee shop; methinks they were slightly hammered!
For Imaginary Garden With Read Toads, where “Play It Again, Toads” found me attracted to Marian’s ABC romp through the alphabet, along with Margaret’s post of “Spring – detail” (1890) by Thomas Wilmer Dewing. Peace, Amy (and what a fun singer was my Mom, right?)
The Underbelly of Spring
In Vermont, they have two seasons:
Winter, plus a week of bad sledding.
In Puerto Rico, you wouldn’t know spring
if it rose up and bit you in your tanned ass.
In Wisconsin, it’s freeze, then thaw, then
freeze again… then roast in your bedding.
In Upstate NY, you go to school to get
ready for finals and sweat through class.
Spring is an unpredictable, mercurial,
unsentimental storm of hot and cold.
April may shower, but May does not
guarantee flowers or blue skies.
May is here, yet Spring has snowstorms
hidden in the seasonal envelope’s fold.
It’s muddy. It’s messy and inconvenient.
Spring hides behind a sunny-side disguise.
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Izy wanted the truth about Spring… all the bad parts. I’ve been through the season in every place mentioned, and I guarantee that I never put away the snow shovel until after Mother’s Day. We once had a surprise storm on (no joke) May Day, and it dumped three feet of wet snow, made me pull little Riley back to the house from the ditched car on a plastic sled, and still the Jeeps and SUVs were out on the road doing donuts. That’s the storm that made possible the picture of Riley above! Whodathunkit?
Also at my poetic all-season resort, Poets United. Peace, Amy
Second poem of the day, I could not resist the dverse prompt about Spring, which means play, gardening, general silliness coming as a consequence of long Wisconsin winters, and… wordplay! Amy
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
SPRING AGAIN
Midwesterners aSPiRING to a quick thaw
as laSt year’s caPRIs cliNG to our memories
We know that SPRING is not far behind
and we’ll Soon bitch about sPiRitING away
A/C to ward off intenSe PeRspirING
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Come, Spring (a cinquain)
Sunlight
Pour through my pane
Melt ice around my heart
Transform my frozen mind gently
Frost free
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Image from Wikimedia Commons, by Mohylek: “I, the copyright holder of this work,
release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide.”
NaPoWriMo #2, for Sunday Scribblings (seasoned, although mine is more seasonal). Also at “It’s Always Sunny at Poets United,” my wintering snowbird delight and haven!
Can you believe it? An unprompted cinquain. Spring must be coming… Peace, Amy
Participating in National Poetry Writing Month “A poem a day keeps the blues at bay.”
Special thanks for Walt at Poetic Bloomings for choosing my recent poem, Thing 205, as his “beautiful bloom” of the week. I was sincerely flattered and honored. Here’s another for the Bloomers and the Scribblers as well!
Honest Thy Ploughs
Honest thy ploughs 
for the coming of Spring
That fields mayst be planted
their bounty to bring
Honest thy wits for
the work to be done
From fertile ground’s goodness
thy foodstuffs be won
Honest thy soul for
the days yet ahead
For labours be grateful,
no prayer left unsaid
© 2012 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil (Photo courtesy of http://www.okgenweb.org)
Dedicated to independent organic farms and the farmers who strive to stay small and grow healthy food, while Monsanto, et al., seek to buy them out, blanket fields with chemicals, and cram Frankenfoods down our throats.
For Sunday Scribblings (honest – a bit of poetic license, arcane use of the imperative verb form for “hone”) and for Poetic Bloomings (poems about Spring).
Sharp Little Pencil 