A Little Madness in the Spring

   

    A little Madness in the Spring

    Is wholesome even for the King,

    But God be with the Clown –

    Who ponders this tremendous scene –

    This whole Experiment of Green –

    As if it were his own!

                                                                                           Emily Dickinson 

Apple Trees

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

                                                    Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill

Field Farm

More Tulips

Tulip Tree

Mt. Hope

Flowers

                         

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

 Robert Frost

 

She slept beneath a tree –

Remembered but by me.

I touched her Cradle mute –

She recognized the foot –

Put on her carmine suit

     And see!

Emily Dickenson

Mute cradles on Park Street - May Day, 2017

Peony Season

Peonies at Dusk

White peonies blooming along the porch
send out light
while the rest of the yard grows dim.

Outrageous flowers as big as human
heads! They’re staggered
by their own luxuriance: I had
to prop them up with stakes and twine.

The moist air intensifies their scent,
and the moon moves around the barn
to find out what it’s coming from.

In the darkening June evening
I draw a blossom near, and bending close
search it as a woman searches
a loved one’s face. 

Jane Kenyon 1993 

what peonies!
one poem per flower
will not do
~ Ryumin

half a mind
to dress up and bow down
to the peony
~ Shiki