#340: March 29, 2007

All nature is a harlequin today:
its motley-colored cloak patched green and brown
is trimmed in gold and lined in thunder gray;
it twirls and dances till the sun goes down

While birds like thrown knives cut against the breeze,
their shadows whizzing past like tiny clouds,
and stick vibrating in the trunks of trees
to awe spectators gathered now in crowds;

It juggles sunspots dazzling to the eye
and whispers verse in greenbranch-rattling rhyme,
and when the daylight bleeds out of the sky,
it tips its tri-corn hat to scoundrel Time

And exits like some poor vagabond king,
exiled, but noble and uncowed--ah, Spring!