Spring Again

"let's try, with the practical birds, 

to praise love's ways."

Spring Again - Anne Stevenson

A touch of blue
in the look of the air -
that tangy, Mozartian

unsuspicious colour.
Naive light rounding a
steel-scrubbed corner.

Wide-open beech tree,
bare still,
pregnant with flower.

Who can believe a
summer will relieve
this undernourished hour?

Between Mersh and Averil,
When spray beginneth to springe, 
The lutel fowl hath hire wil...

Though the elm's low bough
that should be in leaf
is not here now.

The thrush is gone
from the brushwood sheaf,
and that blackened thorn

is a rack of hooks
with plastic sacks
to hang wet weather in.

For all that's wrong,
Lenten is come with love to towne. 
New times, old words.

In a light green haze,
let's try, with the practical birds,
to praise love's ways.