Before a Departure in Spring

Daffodil by Nisaburo Ito (1910 – 1988)

Before A Departure in Spring 

by M.S. Merwin

Once more it is April with the first light sifting

      through the young leaves heavy with dew making the colors

remember who they are the new pink of the cinnamon tree

      the gilded lichens of the bamboo the shadowed bronze

of the kamani and the blue day opening

      as the sunlight descends through it all like the return

of a spirit touching without touch and unable

      to believe it is here and here again and awake

reaching out in silence into the cool breath

      of the garden just risen from darkness and days of rain

it is only a moment the birds fly through it calling

      to each other and are gone with their few notes and the flash

of their flight that had vanished before we ever knew it

      we watch without touching any of it and we

can tell ourselves only that this is April this is the morning

      this never happened before and we both remember it

Metamorphosis

'Spring,' Carl Larsson

METAMORPHOSIS

Always it happens when we are not there — 
The tree leaps up alive into the air,
Small open parasols of Chinese green
Wave on each twig. But who has ever seen
The latch sprung, the bud as it burst?
Spring always manages to get there first.

Lovers of wind, who will have been aware
Of a faint stirring in the empty air,
Look up one day through a dissolving screen
To find no star, but this multiplied green,
Shadow on shadow, singing sweet and clear.
Listen, lovers of wind, the leaves are here!

~ May Sarton 

'The Snowman'

Eyvind Earle print via Pinterest

The Snowman

by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter 

To regard the frost and the boughs 

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; 

And have been cold a long time 

To behold the junipers shagged with ice, 

The spruces rough in the distant glitter 

Of the January sun; and not to think 

Of any misery in the sound of the wind, 

In the sound of a few leaves, 

Which is the sound of the land 

Full of the same wind 

That is blowing in the same bare place 

For the listener, who listens in the snow, 

And, nothing himself, beholds 

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Flower Paintings~~Charles Courtney Curran

'Pink Roses'

One benefit of being snowed in over the weekend was looking at pretty things on Pinterest and  discovering these flower paintings by American artist Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942). I was not familiar with him, but he grew up in Sandusky, Ohio and many of his paintings were painted on the shores of Lake Erie. He is best known for his lush paintings of flowers, young women, and children and his use of natural light.  I am always looking around for old pictures of flowers, and especially of old fashioned flowers, like peonies and hollyhocks, and I thought they were so pretty.

'Among the Hollyhocks'

'The Peonies'

'Lady with a Bouquet'

'Peonies'

'Golden Glow'

'Among the Roses'

'Woman with Rhododendrons'

All photos via Pinterest.