My Song of Spring Beyond all Sadness – Day 25

Day 25: Prompt to write a poem on a season and which mine is a very different way of remembering a particular season.

 

My Song of Spring Beyond all Sadness

 

I read Keats, his poem To Autumn.

How many years ago now

I wrote an essay to spring

using that first line.  Where,

did that come from? I have

no recollection of having

read the poem myself, or

of anyone reading it to me.

But begin the essay that way

I did!

 

I’ll put it down to an earlier life.

You can argue if you like.

 

My English teacher never raised

the subject of the poem but

I do recall his excitement at the essay.

I was what is called, a ‘mature’

student, coming back to classes.

 

Came time to sit the exam

I started; but then I walked out;

that being the anniversary of his birthday –

our little son we’d lost.

 

His hair never soft-lifted

by a winnowing wind.

And then Keats goes on

Where are the songs of spring?

 

My song of spring

was to my infant child;

his sweet smell, the few hours

I held him, his weak cry.

My lips pressed softly to his fontanel.

He was my spring song —

and gone. I want to scream

a tiny wisp of hair never soft-lifted

by a winnowing wind

memories of five senses

and the exam I could not sit.

 

Benita H. Kape © 26.4.2019

 

Day 25: Prompt to write a poem on a season and which mine is a very different way of remembering a particular season.

• Is specific to a season
• Uses imagery that relates to all five senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell)
• Includes a rhetorical question, (like Keats’ “where are the songs of spring?”)

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NOVEMBER and the Cherry Tree

This is the Cherry tree in her 2nd year;  her blossoms even more dense this year

November   and   the   Cherry   Tree

(protesting colonisation of every kind)

 

We have had temperatures in the twenties

and rising, normal for this time of year

and our place on the globe. But last night

a spring storm swept in with all

the force it could muster. I watched

through my high lounge window,

the beauty of the tree in full bloom,

blousy, pink; and I loved her November

promise of the warmer months ahead.

But we get them at this time of year, these

late spring storms.

 

In the morning blossoms, light, pink

but looking like confetti, covered

our car windows and the yard.

And the Cherry Tree revealed

more leaf; the density of blossom

sadly and exponentially reduced.

The wind was still blowing, and

though we get the equinox winds

in October, this was a more

powerful spring storm. And yet,

I have faith in the Cherry Tree’s

recovery; a wealth of leaves

we expect in November. On many

an occasion,  I feel as battered

if I never speak out.

 

I wanted to call this poem simply

“November” but so many are

already so named. A large

percentage of which shout

of colonisation; the arrogance

of an old world; even to months

of the year and what’s to be expected

of a word, a noun – a top versus

a bottom of the globe; and taking

for granted that November means

autumn and endings.

 

November Aotearoa is spring and beginnings;

Beltane then Christmas is the way it is:

of Pohutukawa and Manuka in flower.

November, as a title for this poem?

Something suggests no, do not go there today:

“November and the Cherry Tree” it is. And

this is my “colonization within literature” protest.

 

Benita H. Kape © 2.11.2018

Cherry Tree in November:  my battered survivor

The Reply

The Reply

(after Glenys’s request

  made known to me)

 

A spring day,

what’s to reply to!

The season

just begun.

The sun is shining.

I speak between clouds.

The wind is chill.

Chill wind or no

the washing will dry.

Words come to me.

Poets and lovers of poetry;

there will always be poetry.

 

Benita H. Kape © 15.8.2017