Spring in pictures and words

“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.” 
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Spring is not yet here, but the song of a solitary, pioneering blackbird when I wake, the smell of something warm and floral on the air in fleeting moments, these signs give me hope.” 
― Tracy Rees, Amy Snow

The morning, happy thing,
Supposed that he had come to dwell,
And life would be all spring.” 
― Emily Dickinson

“Come with me into the woods where spring is
advancing, as it does, no matter what,
not being singular or particular, but one
of the forever gifts, and certainly visible.” 
― Mary Oliver, Dog Songs

And Spring came the day after tomorrow,
I would die peacefully, because it came the day after tomorrow.
If that’s its time, when else should it come?
I like it that everything is real and everything is right;
And I like that it would be like this even if I didn’t like it.
And so, if I die now, I die peacefully
Because everything is real and everything is right.” 
― Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro

“Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"...
"It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...” 
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“The snow has not yet left the earth, but spring is already asking to enter your heart. If you have ever recovered from a serious illness, you will be familiar with the blessed state when you are in a delicious state of anticipation, and are liable to smile without any obvious reason. Evidently that is what nature is experiencing just now. The ground is cold, mud and snow squelches under foot, but how cheerful, gentle and inviting everything is! The air is so clear and transparent that if you were to climb to the top of the pigeon loft or the bell tower, you feel you might actually see the whole universe from end to end. The sun is shining brightly, and its playful, beaming rays are bathing in the puddles along with the sparrows. The river is swelling and darkening; it has already woken up and very soon will begin to roar. The trees are bare, but they are already living and breathing.” 

― Anton Chekhov, The Exclamation Mark

“The deep roots never doubt spring will come.” 
― Marty Rubin

“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything. (Sonnet XCVIII)” 
― William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Sonnets

“It always amazes me to look at the little, wrinkled brown seeds and think of the rainbows in 'em," said Captain Jim. "When I ponder on them seeds I don't find it nowise hard to believe that we've got souls that'll live in other worlds. You couldn't hardly believe there was life in them tiny things, some no bigger than grains of dust, let alone colour and scent, if you hadn't seen the miracle, could you?” 
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams

“When the groundhog casts his shadow
And the small birds sing
And the pussywillows happen
And the sun shines warm
And when the peepers peep
Then it is Spring” 
― Margaret Wise Brown

“She could feel magic in the quiet spring day, like a sorcerer’s far-off voice, and lines of poetry floated over her mind as if they were strands of spider-web.” 
― Stella Gibbons

“Spring is far more than just a changing of seasons; it’s a rebirth of the spirit.” 
― Toni Sorenson

“Woods were ringed with a colour so soft, so subtle that it could scarcely be said to be a colour at all. It was more the idea of a colour - as if the trees were dreaming green dreams or thinking green thoughts.” 
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“who knows if the moon's
a balloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky--filled with pretty people?
( and if you and I should

get into it,if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people

than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen 
city which nobody's ever visited,where

always
it's
Spring)and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves” 
― E.E. Cummings, Collected Poems

The year’s at the spring
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hillside’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His heaven –
All’s right with the world!
—Robert Browning

“Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.” 
― Robert Frost

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.” 
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“If we surrendered
to earth's intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.” 
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.” 
― Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings

“There Will Come Soft Rains 

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.” 
― Sara Teasdale, Flame and Shadow

“I perceive God everywhere in His works. I sense Him in me; I see Him all around me.” 
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful.” 
― Pete Hamill

“Under the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me
And tune his merry note,
Unto the sweet bird's throat;
Come hither, come hither, come hither.
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.” 
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.” 
― Gustave Flaubert, November

“Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances.” 
― Charles Baudelaire

“He smelled cold water and cold intrepid green. Those early flowers smelled like cold water. Their fragrence was not the still perfume of high summer; it was the smell of cold, raw green.”
― P. Harding

“...as young and as ancient as Spring....” 
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

I welcome spring for its promise, for its breath of life, its songs and even its capriciousness, As the days grow longer, hope grows stronger.

The Call of the Ocean

I miss the ocean. The feel of the salt spray which seems to get into your pores seems like a face mask by nature. There is no need for music when you have the crash and hiss of the waves and they hurl themselves on shore and cling with wet foamy fingers to the rocks and sand as they are dragged back to the ocean's cradle. From time time to the wind which roars in an unending crescendo is punctuated by the staccato of a seagull shriek in a measure of three beats. Everything comes in threes. In low tide there is sand , wet, glistening taupe of billions of fine grains and smelling of brine and seaweed and something primeval. In high tide there are the swaths of beach rocks in greys, russets, sandstone, blackish-grey, and white like opaque marbles shot through with silica. So many individuals in shape and size and calling to my eyes like sirens of stone. There is driftwood twisted, scoured, stripped free of bark the white grey bone fragments of trees. Their voices can be felt with the hand like the sound of the ocean in a seashell. Each line once flowed with sap blood and each knot held up a branch in salute to the sun and in supplication to the moon. The ocean which has rocked them with its berceuse, stirred them in its churning and yearning,  has tired of them and cast them shore-ward to snatch fresh fodder from the earth in the tug of war it ever plays. 

Indian Head from Stephenville Crossing, NL 

There are other refugees finding the banks of the sea. Shells; mussels with their blue and white markings like rough pottery, sea urchins like bone pincushions, fiddler crab husks intact or in part their fiddling days gone silent, shark eyes which my mother called conchiloos their spirals inside often exposed like internal staircases with their grandeur eroded, whelks with their unicorn horns, black clams paled to white, scallops as rare as angel wings in pairs. 

Tattered rope frayed in yellow, dull orange or blue- green like locks of synthetic mermaid hair.

Fragments of lobster pots spat up as if in revenge for so many death sentences. 
Broken bottle bits in green brown and white and if you are very lucky in blue. The newer the shinier, but no friend to fingers. The older sandpapered to opacity, frosted to smoothness, almost sugared for the fingers. 

Indian Head St. Georges NL

The Johnny and Jane- come- lately-es : plastic truck wheels, a doll's torso one arm reaching, a piece of CD its disco dancing days past and the pale pink and white torpedo cases of tampons lurking like unexploded detritus to startle the treasure seeker. 

I miss feet crunching over the rocks, Each step bone-jarring, Each step the rocks grabbing at your shoes then receding in small squadrons in depressions that require agility to move on. Their muttering in rock language a challenge and an exhortation to life, to perseverance. 

My Dad with dreams of past and future

I miss the moods of the ocean. Its greenness, its blueness, its green-blueness, its greyness, its inkiness, its almost silverness, A fickle fashionista of colour but always with touches of lace as if she would always be ready with handkerchiefs in times of tears, cold or fine dining. 

Shorelines change with the passage of time, wind and waves, but the ocean is timeless. It calls to us down to our inner beings, Sirens to our very cells and primeval memories.