Early Times

It's officially Spring, and if we're not quite certain of that yet, it is, for a fact, April. I wrote this poem about 35 years ago, on another April day that was a little too cold for comfort:

Spring comes down in a March wind
Flapping white sheets in my face
On a late April day north of Chicago.

Caroline in green with hair like
Dandelion silk
Sits in the new sun among the
Yellow flower faces.

The sheets snap like wet towels at my face and arms
And I laugh up into the ragged white flapping and
April blue sky.

Caroline is laughing and lifting up her arms,
Her fists full of fuzzy flower feathers.

We've been to the garden
And on a blue plate in the grass
The first radishes are red and ripe
And riposte off my tongue.

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