Wet Spring
Fire in the cookstove so late in April,
& even the buds on the spindly azalea
refuse to blossom; the dandelions rise
whispering, late, late, & the tools
lie limp in the garden beyond which
rough lumps of soil drink in the
pounding rain & my vision
of six weeks of unending rain.
For you who have not lived here
day by day, bloom after bloom,
there is no design or reason for
"unending rain;” & for one who
arrives & leaves early next day,
this pattern's changed by seeing
the garden, its every streaming wonder,
as an anticipation of each moment.
I set out to arrange the garden,
to enhance the pattern that in the rain
had bloomed & faded to what seemed
impermanent & was a response to,
an echo of, what had gone before.
Wet blue forget-me-nots spun tipsily
down the lawn, this flower
an anticipation of that flower,
while the creeping daisy-whites
raced up a hillside rich with
fresher flowers, forever. At least
I'd like it to be like that, each
moment a going-forth: one morning
after the rain had stopped, I cut to
the stem last year's spiny rose-hip shoots
& what came back was all leaf
& greenery, all freshness & renewal,
each moment an after-thought of
what had gone before; a sweetness
spread leaf to leaf, & from this
ungiving spring's spare economy
came hemlock seedlings along
a soggy embankment & the rain
began again.
Tony Whedon’s poems and essays appear in Harpers, Agni, American Poetry Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Sewanee Review, Ploughshares and elsewhere. Read more.