Springtide in Missouri
©2010, Olan L. Smith
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Yards green with life ― neighbor's box garden
Heaped with black soil and this afternoon I will see her toil,
Wipe her brow and then labor more the dirt of death
To make it yield its fertility.
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A pair of turtle doves, wings whistling to nearest bough,
Always in twos, lovers for life not a second less or more,
While bluebirds sit on grape arbors budding in continuation,
As though from a winter's nap they yawn and twine.
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Daffodils limp
Yellow pedals stroke the earth
But tulips reinstate their glory,
As nature's cycle unfurls in vividness.
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Redbud trees bloom in stately manner and dogwoods wait their outing.
Our Hawthorn is our state flower far from sea or shore
Yet our inland beauty is par none though
All will rightfully claim their homeland is most glorious.
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Hades surrenders Persephone and she rises to Gaia's surface.
Her mother, Demeter, smiles and spring resumes once again
And harvest will soon come. Teresa sharpens her sickle
Awaiting her winter wheat to ripen.
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Squirrels scurry about and chatter
Trying to remember where they buried those nuts,
While earthworms churn dirt-to-dirt
And Earth-to-earth.
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The fisher places spade into ground and turns the soil
And in delight she uncovers live lure, turning worm
Into her hunger's dinner plate — she places worm on hook,
Hook on line, line to pole and plops the living snare
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In water and watches for bobber to bob.
Next, she reels in lure
Setting her barb deep within
The cavernous mouth of a hungry bass.
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Cleaning the seized fish she watches a robin hop nearby
Tilting its head from left to right listening for a sound of a grub or worm,
The bird snatches a feast and off it flies with worm wiggling
From beak and perches in a yellow spirea shrub.
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Here she has built a nest and laid her progeny,
And now to gaping mouths she offers her capture of sacrificial life.
As the fisher travels homeward she surveys squirrels digging
In loam discovering their hidden treasures and those unfound
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Will spring forth saplings into mighty trees. Zeus is happy for
Hades has released his daughter, born of Demeter, but for six months,
No more or less, then she will depart both mother and father traveling
Deep into the depths of Hell to reclaim her rightful place in her wedded bliss.
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Journey Home
PoetryJourney Home c.2013, Olan L. Smith Journey Home is a collection of poems that is a personal search for my spiritual home. I go about this search with the tools of poetry using the English language as my map. Love, peace and freedom, Olan L. Smith
