Sudden abundance.
An astonishing display!

The life I'd known was there
But simply hadn't seen
Burst from the earth in ambush
And I am surrounded,
My defenses overwhelmed
By green and flowering things.

Eyes tired of winter's monochrome
Are widened in surprise
By such a transformation
Is such a compressed time.

Hours?
Minutes?
In a flash?
There's magic in the air.
And dancing, songs and laughter -
After death-like sleep of winter,
Now banished to the past.

A photo in the album of folk
Between the Wars with trams and
Carts and wide-brimmed hats -
That's how I see last winter,
As an age apart.

Meadow

The name we give this space
Is so much like a meadow;
The sounds we make as they pass
From mouth to ear are
Softly, sweetly, soothing.

And so a meadow is!
The breeze that bows
The nodding flowers
And bends the blades of grass
Has in its arms the scents released
By all these growing things.

When land elsewhere must earn its keep,
The meadow here beside the trees
Is free of obligation.
There'll be no harvest,
Sold for cash or used as cattle feed.

It has no other purpose than to please the eye,
A little place beneath the sky
Endowed with life
And as you pass,
A quietening sense
of peace.