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| Trillium - Photo by Wilda Morris |
Spring has long been a favorite subject of poets. A mud-luscious season full of daffodils and bird migrations. A time of rebirth. A time of love. Here is a spring poem I first saw on yourdailypoem.com.
The Miracle
Come, sweetheart,
listen, for I have a thing
Most wonderful to tell you—news of spring.
Albeit winter still is in the air,
And the earth troubled, and the branches bare,
Yet down the fields to-day I saw her pass—
The spring—her feet went shining through the grass.
She touched the ragged hedgerows—I have seen
Her finger-prints, most delicately green;
And she has whispered to the crocus leaves,
And to the garrulous sparrows in the eaves.
Swiftly she passed and shyly, and her fair
Young face was hidden in her cloudy hair.
She would not stay, her season is not yet,
But she has reawakened, and has set
The sap of all the world astir, and rent
Once more the shadows of our discontent.
Triumphant news—a miracle I sing—
The everlasting miracle of spring.
~ John Drinkwater
This poem is in the public domain.
Spring rain inspired me to write this poem:
A Walk in the Woods
Rain whispers down
through trees,
glazes moss and
lichen
painted on trunks
of maple and ash,
varnishes green
leaves
of maidenhair
fern,
Solomon’s seal,
bellwort and
trillium.
It fills yellow
lady’s slippers,
slakes the thirst
of wild ginger,
violets
and
forget-me-nots.
My long hair
becomes a woodland
waterfall.
~ Wilda Morris
Versions of this poem have been published in The Avocet, and Spark (June 2013), p. 43 (http://www.sparkthemagazine.com/?p=5892).
Melissa Huff won recognition form the National Federation of State Poetry Societies for a spring poem. She brings a very different perspective to spring.
Spring Is a Strong Verb
Do not suppose it
gentle
this season of
greening
when bundled
fibers gather
their juices until girdled
with power they
push
through the earth,
drive
into the sky
wielding buds
filled with fierce
energy
that defy gravity
until
time to unfold and
hold
the strength of
the sun.
~ Melissa Huff
First published in March 2019 by Origami Poems Project, origamipoems.com. Reprinted in June 2019 in “BlackBerry Peach Poetry Prizes 2019”, National Federations of State Poetry Societies, and in 2020 in “Distilled Lives, vol. 5”.
More spring poems from the Internet:
- https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/literary/poems-for-spring. Poets as different as Christina Rosetti, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Billy Collins.
- https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/137291/spring-poems. Includes a link to “In Spring” by e. e. cummings, source of the word “mud-luscious.”
- https://bookriot.com/spring-poems/. The texts of some poems; links to others.
- https://poets.org/text/poems-spring. Links to poems from poets as varied as Toi Derricotte, Robert Burns and Li-Young Lee.
The March Challenge:
The challenge for this month is a poem about the season of spring. Try to find a new angle. Spring, in your poem, may be literal or metaphoric. You may concentrate on one thing about the season or be more expansive. Your poem may be serious or humorous. Use your imagination! Note that the blog format does not accommodate shaped poems or long lines; if they are used, they have to be broken in two, with the second part indented (as in the poem “Lilith,” one of the May 2018 winners), or the post has to use small print. Note, too, that long poems are at a disadvantage.
Poems could be disqualified if the guidelines are not followed.
1-Title your poem unless it is in a form that discourages titles.
2-Single-space.
3-Put your submission in this order:
Your poem
Publication data if your poem was previously published
Your name
A brief third-person bio
Your email address – it saves me a lot of work if you put your email address at the end of your submission.
4-Please keep the poem on the left margin (standard 1” margin). Do not put any part of your submission on a colored background. No colored type. Do not use a fancy font and do not use a header or footer.
5-You may submit a published poem if you retain copyright, but please include publication data. This applies to poems published in books, journals, newspapers, or on the Internet. Poems already used on this blog are not eligible to win, but the poets may submit a different poem.
6-The deadline is March 15. Poems submitted after the deadline will not be considered. There is no charge to enter, so there are no monetary rewards. Winners are published on this blog.
7-Please don’t stray too far from “family-friendly” language (some children and teens read this blog).
8- No simultaneous submissions, please. You should know by the end of the month whether or not your poem will be published.
9-The poet retains copyright on each poem. If a previously unpublished poem wins and is published elsewhere later, please give credit to this blog. I do not register copyright with the US copyright office, but by US law, the copyright belongs to the writer unless the writer assigns it to someone else.
10-Decision of the judge or judges is final.
11-If the same poet wins three months in a row (which has not happened thus far), he or she will be asked not to submit the following two months.
12-Send one poem only.
How to Submit Your Poem:
1-Send your poem to wildamorris4[at]gmail[dot]com (substitute the @ sign for “at” and a . for “dot”). The poem must respond in some way to the specific challenge for the month.
2-Put “March Poetry Challenge Submission” FOLLOWED BY YOUR NAME in the subject line of your email. Include a brief bio that can be printed with your poem if you are a winner this month.
3-Submission of a poem gives permission for the poem to be posted on the blog if it is a winner, so be sure that you put your name exactly as you would like it to appear if you do win at the end of the poem.
4-Poems may be pasted into an email or sent as an attachment or both (Doc, Docx, rich text or plain text; no pdf files, please). Please do not indent the poem or center it on the page. It helps if you submit the poem in the format used on the blog (Title and poem left-justified; title in bold (not all capital letters); your name at the bottom of the poem). Put everything in the order listed above.
6-Also, please do not use multiple spaces instead of punctuation in the middle of lines. I have no problem with poets using that technique (I sometimes do it myself). However, I have difficulty getting the blog to accept and maintain extra spaces.
Poems shorter than 40 lines are generally preferred but longer poems will be considered.
Bios:
John Drinkwater was born in London in 1882. He left school early to go to work for an insurance company but eventually became a popular poet and playwright. He also published essays and wrote, produced and narrated a film in honor of the coronations of King George VI. Along with Rupert Brooke, Robert Frost and others, he published the literary journal, New Numbers for several years. He died in 1937. Read more about him at www.johndrinkwater.org.
Melissa Huff feeds her poetry from many sources—the mystery of the natural world, the way humans everywhere connect and the importance of spirit. Her love for reading poetry aloud won her awards in 2019 and 2020 in the BlackBerry Peach Prizes for Poetry: Spoken and Heard, sponsored by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. Recent publishing credits include Gyroscope Review, Blue Heron Review, Persimmon Tree, and Northern Colorado Writers’ Chiarascuro: Anthology of Virtue & Vice. Melissa has been frequently sighted making her way – by car, train or airplane – between Illinois and Colorado.
Wilda Morris is workshop chair of Poets & Patrons of Chicago and a former president of the Illinois State Poetry Society. She is a member of the P2 Collective, a group of four poets and three photographers in the Chicago area who respond to each other’s work. You can see some results of their collaboration at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWH73qHRhrLprkLPSzQ574w. Wilda also writes rengay together with other haiku poets. She has won awards for formal and free verse as well as haiku. Her favorite seasons are autumn and spring.
© Wilda Morris
