Happy Spring, everyone! I meant to post this poem prior to Mother's Day, but alas, I am a few weeks late. Even so, I think it is worth posting today, while spring is still bursting around us everywhere, and the fragrance of rain and heat and blossoms and newly cut grass summon nostalgic memories every time I step outside. I find this to be an extremely beautiful and moving poem. I have yet to read the final stanzas without tears. It is written by former U.S. Poet Laureate, Ted Koozer, and is contained in his Pulitzer Prize winning collection of poetry entitled: DELIGHTS & SHADOWS (which I highly recommend reading). I hope you enjoy the poem. --Here's to the intricate beauty of spring and to all people in our lives who are "mothers" to us. Love and peace, Lisa MOTHER Mid April already, and the wild plums bloom at the roadside, a lacy white against the exuberant, jubilant green of new grass and the dusty, fading black of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet, only the delicate, star-petaled blossoms, sweet with their timeless perfume. You have been gone a month today and have missed three rains and one nightlong watch for tornados. I sat in the cellar from six to eight while fat spring clouds went somersaulting, rumbling east. Then it poured, a storm that walked on legs of lightning, dragging its shaggy belly over the fields. The meadowlarks are back, and the finches are turning from green to gold. Those same two geese have come to the pond again this year, honking in over the trees and splashing down. They never nest, but stay a week or two then leave. The peonies are up, the red sprouts burning circles like birthday candles, for this is the month of my birth, as you know, the best month to be born in, thanks to you, everything ready to burst with living. There will be no more new flannel nightshirts sewn on our old black Singer, no birthday card addressed in a shaky but businesslike hand. You asked me if I would be sad when it happened and I am sad. But the iris I moved from your house now hold in the dusty dry fists of their roots green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner, as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that. Were it not for the way you taught me to look at the world, to see the life at play in everything, I would have to be lonely forever. --Ted Koozer from Delights & Shadows © 2004 Copper Canyon Press