This Year’s April Madrigal
Softly it stole up out of the sea,
sighed Harriet Prescott Spofford,
in those charmed ages dark and rich
before your atoms came together.
We floated in the idle breeze,
just two lilies on a stem –
a secret of the spheres long hid.
Two hundred years ago, they say.
All day the lime blows in the sun,
the orchards all a-flutter with pink.
Once they were one, as the light is —
like some immortal heathen thing.
Into this world with April, you –
when the great breezes call
what love do I bring
to the earth
now?

. . . . .

spb