The wind is tossing the lilacs, The new leaves laugh in the sun, And the petals fall on the orchard wall, But for me the spring is done.

(Home is) a place we carry inside ourselves, a place where we welcome the unfamiliar because we know that as time passes it will become the very bedrock of our being.

Then it poured, A storm that walked on legs of lightning, Dragging its shaggy belly over the fields. The meadowlarks are back, and the finches Are turning from green to gold.

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.

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.

Come and let us seek together Springtime lore of daffodils, Giving to the golden weather Greeting on the sun-warm hills.

A light is laughing thro’ the scattered rain, A color quickens in the meadow; Drops are still, upon the window-pane — They cast a silver shadow.

What did she tell me of that house of hers? White gatepost; terrace; fanlight of the door; A widow’s walk above the bouldered shore; Salt winds that ruffle the surrounding firs.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower, The periwinkle trailed its wreaths; And ’tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes.

Today is the day when daffodils bloom, Which children pick to fill the room, Today is the day when grasses green, When leaves burst forth for spring to be seen.

Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

They still wear last summer’s leaves The lightest brown almost translucent How their stubbornness has decorated The winter woods.

Thirty seconds of waves colliding. Kelp with its open attitudes, Seals riding the swells, curved in a row Just under the water.

House without air, I leave you and lock your door. Wild swans, come over the town, come over The town again, trailing your legs and crying! 

The snow is dear to me; and the moon rising; and the silver sea. With my robes I cover the speckled hen’s eggs and the brindled sea shell 

Sometimes the mist overhangs my path, And blackening clouds about me cling; But, oh, I have a magic way To turn the gloom to cheerful day – I softly sing.

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

Fairy snow, fairy snow, Blowing, blowing everywhere, Would that I Too, could fly Lightly, lightly through the air.

Hand in hand, we Will go forward toward nothing While our clothes darken And our faces stream With the sweet waters Of heaven.

Children’s fingerprints On a frozen window Of a small schoolhouse An empire, I read somewhere, Maintains itself through The cruelty of its prisons.