Spring

Today is the day when bold kites fly,
When cumulus clouds roar across the sky.
When robins return, when children cheer,
When light rain beckons spring to appear.

Today is the day when daffodils bloom,
Which children pick to fill the room,
Today is the day when grasses green,
When leaves burst forth for spring to be seen.
(Spring, Robert McCracken)

What a glorious blue sky and what mighty winds blow across it. What joy in the laughter of the children as they run on the soccer pitch, their red and blue jerseys catching the gusts, ballooning this way then that. When I was young, on gusty afternoons like this, I imagined I needed only to stretch my arms out wide enough and jump at an exact moment to be lifted and carried across the yard, then set back down, perhaps on my belly, on the newly dried earth.

There are the twigs, pulled from the trees and sent flying all around, carried by the wind, but also by Duncan, who is surely impressed with their numbers. He chases them and tackles them before they slide across the sidewalk, chews them a few moments until they are nice wet then spots the next one, and then the one after that, each new discovery more precious than the last. And then, finally, with such abundance all around him has no choice but to throw himself into the grass and roll and roll, his hair pulling it up until he is covered in a dusting of green and fading yellow.

And the trees, magnets to the wind, could not seem taller and fuller in their nudity. They have celebrated the day, baked in warm light until exploding with buds––mere balls, tiny and red, almost brown, but swelling and growing, making promises they have no choice but to keep. These trees out front, along my sidewalk, are old and have seen this before, but they whisper their excitement and the wind carries it across the fields, across the street, over each blade of grass, sharing it with all who will listen. "This is Spring," they say. Finally at last they say it. "Spring has come."