Spring

False starts, spring stutters inexorably to Life,

As winter in defiance does her best to keep her hold,

With snatches of frost and flurry.

But the blood is up and the sap is rising,

Excitement is here to stay:


Copulating doves bill and coo their mutual adoration.

Starlings, like sweaty wives

Incessantly gabbling their gossip in raucous mimicry,

Strut the lawn in half ordered lines,

Leather Jacketing.


Rooks party, an aerial disco at tree top level.

And the landscape,

Once clad in muted hues of buff and ochre,

Gives way to the verdant greens of sprouting grass

Where an early crop of lambs

Skip and frolic and

Return to head butt mothers udder,

The reward seen in excited tails.




Everywhere new life surges, pushed up by

Some unseen hand from mother earth.

Fragile In its newness,

Robust in its vigour,

Bewildering in its diversity.



Sticky buds of would-be “conkers”,

The velvet soft of beech leaves hanging limp

Like drying butterflies wings,

The heady waft of the flowering current

stir memories of childhood.


The race is on, running, faster, bigger, better

To summer.