May 15, 2011 ~ haibun ~

  

After the Book of Spring

leave spring behind… 

empty blue robin eggs… 

geese are gone…

Each page of the Book of Spring says something… nothing… everything. A

volume filled with the sound of things arriving for the first time, of things returning.

When taken together, the pages are a song of colors where there were no colors.

Sandhill Cranes and Whistling Swans arrive with spring then continue north

before summer slips in. 

Robins split from their winter Flockopolis and build nests of twitter, split hairs

and side effects in tall bushes and spring trees, in steeples, edges of attics, and dabbed on brick ledges outside the common room window. 

While they hook up, breed and brood I ask the Commonwealth of Virginia, “Does Virginia have an official name for the color of a robins egg?” 

“It’s light blue to you,” they say. 

“For the record,” I whisper, “I hear eleven shades of blue I know are true.”

When every robins nest is empty 

and the Tule Swan is gone, 

Warm up with the first 

Symphony of Summer Song.

Awaken scarlet-splashed blackbirds 

in a mustard field at dawn… 

Each year that much older, 

another season has moved on.

Written while the sun went down 

Arlington, Virginia 

May 15, 2011 

- Peach