Poems for Spring

Spring is a popular topic for poems: Read all about what Garrison Keillor had to say about the A Prairie Home Companion Spring Lyric Contest and read the the 15 finalist poems chosen for 2007.

Here is a revised version o our entry composed originally on the first full day of spring this year. It was particularly warm that day and the snow from one of largest blizzards in years was about gone although it had been less than 3 weeks before.

          Ephemeral Song  


          water 
          running gurgles
          rushing whirling breeze tossed
          snow melting equinox chaos
          delight— 
 
          harmless
          joie de vivre ?
          Warm winds one month early
          lull prairie refuges to drop
          their guard.

          Beware!
          March is fickle.
          Like Sirens from the sea
          Odysseus heard long ago,
          cold waits

          unseen ...
          April's surge makes 
          aqueous stones young ducks,
          enamored like love stunned sailors,
          misread.

Thought about the form and some of my favorite poets: Her (American poet Adelaide Crapsey) cinquains were published posthumously in 1915 in her The Complete Poems. Cinquains became better known through the work of Carl Sandburg (Cornhuskers, 1918) and Louis Untermeyer (Modern American Poetry, 1919).