A cold spring: the violet was flawed on the lawn. For two weeks or more the trees hesitated; the little leaves waited, carefully indicating their characteristics.

To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.

Hark, I hear a robin calling! List, the wind is from the south! And the orchard-bloom is falling Sweet as kisses on the mouth.

I was born to water On an island in the sea. The surf outside the window Each night put me to sleep. Waves against the shore Rumbled cobbles On the stormy coast.

The last light of the sun Lies over the pasture Where sheep are grazing. Off toward the sea, Where the pasture dips to the dunes.

Robins sing and maple sap rises, but the peepers in full voice are the ancient and triumphant cry of life enduring.

Underneath my outside face There’s a face that none can see. A little less smiley, A little less sure, But a whole lot more like me.

In spring when maple buds are red, We turn the clock an hour ahead; Which means, each March that arrives, We lose an hour out of our lives.

Thirty days hath September, April, June and November. All the rest have thirty-one, Excepting February alone, And that has twenty-eight days clear And twenty-nine in each leap year.

The whistle of a boat Calls and cries unendingly, Like some lost child In tears and trouble Hunting the harbor’s breast And the harbor’s eyes.

Had we but world enough and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love’s day.

For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Desiring your bright hands In the penumbra of the flame: Smelling of oak and of rose; of death. Ancient winter.

The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

In winter All the singing is in The tops of the trees Where the wind-bird With its white eyes Shoves and pushes Among the branches Like any of us.

Only a night from old to new; Only a sleep from night to morn. The new is but the old come true; Each sunrise sees a new year born.

The clock is crouching, dark and small, Like a time bomb in the hall. Hark! It’s midnight, children dear. Duck! Here comes another year.

Light, life and love always begin with the individual I can see the glass half empty or half full When the sun shatters the darkness of night, and we rise to a new day.

I love you Because no two snowflakes are alike And it is possible If you stand tippy-toe To walk between the raindrops.