Idiotic April

Spring
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
To what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I observe The spikes of crocus. The smell of the earth is good. It is apparent that there is no death. But what does that signify? Not only under ground are the brains of men Eaten by maggots. Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, April Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers. We are way past the spikes of crocus season, Ms. St. Vincent Millay, and deep into the pinks and yellows.  I didn't remember this poem being such a downer, but it surely is fitting for this opening day of April, of Poetry Month, of yet another day of burning sinuses . . .   our friends the Marlins' farm at Antietam from Canal Road

Spring in the Hollow

This was taken last week; the daffodils are quickly wilting away now. 

"For oft, when on my couch I lie
   In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
   Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils."

~Wordsworth 

The forsythia are quickly turning from brilliant yellow to lime green.

"The forsythia sings against a chorus

of green, yet the hue of winter looms."

~ Rosemary Royston

 

This is Bradford Pear, right?  This tree is along our northside fence row.

"no flower ever opened   
so staunch a white leaf,   
no flower ever parted silver
from such rare silver"

~ Hilda Doolittle

The redbud are beautiful right now.

"I will go, I said, to the country

When the red-bud blooms in the spring

And then, as of old, for sheer rapture

My heart will sing."

~ May Frink Converse

The dogwood are my favorite.

"But high o'er all the early floral train,
Where softness all the arching sky resumes,
The dogwood dancing to the winds' refrain,
In stainless glory spreads its snowy blooms."

~ George Marion McClellan