What flowers do you wait for each spring to signal this year’s demise of the dreaded and desolate winter? I wait for them all. For the abundance that takes me by surprise, and lifts my heart higher than the warming temperatures.
The day awakes at 4 a.m., as do I. Especially now since it’s late April, pretty nearly May, and the birds start shouting out to their potential mates long before the more reasonable hour of 6 a.m. The sun shines through my window more intently now too, since, you know, it is spring. The sun is doing extra urgent wake up duty in my house today as we adjust to the newest domestic nuisance – the curtain rod broke in the master bedroom this weekend.
With sleep an elusive dream, I hit the road by 6:30 looking for adventure and all the visual treats April offers. I counted my blessings in flower petals and realized how lucky I am. And all of this would have been missed had I not been so rudely awakened by the sun, songs, and sleeplessness.
In New England, April is definitely the favored child of the seasons. Lavished with praise and privileges, no other season can match. The first whispers of warm weather, brighter, longer days, new birth in just about every arena, beautiful plant explosions on every street, happier people, fluffy chicks, and, oh, the flowers. Sorry for you, scorched and humid Summer, bleak and cold Winter and harbinger of death Autumn.
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It’s no wonder April inspires poetry month and the first flower flash mob (hey, those weren’t there last week!), and so here is a poem about spring often attributed to Ogden Nash, or e.e. cummings, but now believed to not have been written by either. Googling a source today, decades after I started reciting this poem, I learned I don’t even have the words right….so first is the version I learned, second how the rest of the world thinks it goes. I think the version I know should be credited to my mother. Happy Mothers’ Day.
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BTW when I was a child and I asked my mother what her favorite flower was she always said “violets”. It wasn’t until I was much older that I asked “Is your favorite flower still violets?” and she told me “It never was”. Violets grew all over the place near our house, and I can only assume she called them her favorite so we could feel good about picking them for her. Now I think she likes gardenia, but can I really be sure?
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My version….
Spring has Sprung
The Grass is Riz
I Wonder Where
The Flowers Is
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The other version sounds like the Three Stooges to me, I could almost picture Curley saying it. Anybody else?.
Spring is sprung,
the grass is riz,
I wonder where the boidies is.
They say the boid is on the wing.
But that’s absoid.
The wing is on the boid.
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Get outside and enjoy the plethora of posies, everyone. Happy Spring!
All flowers and many more found this morning on my walk.
© 2013 by Alison Colby-Campbell
Brain4Rent's Blog 