American Life in Poetry: ‘In Spring’

I'm writing this column in the earliest days of another spring, and here's a fine spring poem from Rose King's book "Time and Peonies," from Hummingbird Press. The poet lives in California.

In Spring

(Rose King)

I'm out with the wheelbarrow mixing mulch.

A mockingbird trills in the pine.

Then, from higher, a buzz, and through patches of blue

as the fog burns off, a small plane pulls a banner,

red letters I can't read-

but I do see, over the fence,

a man in a sky-blue shirt walking his dog to the beach.

He says he missed it, will keep an eye out.

Four barrows of mulch around the blueberry bushes,

I'm pulling off gloves, and he's back, beaming.

"It says, I LOVE YOU, MARTHA.

Are you Martha?"

We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. Poem copyright 2017 by Rosie King from "Time and Peonies," (Hum­ming­bird Press, 2017). Poem reprinted by permission of Rosie King and the publisher.