April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
These, I, singing in spring, collect for lovers
Collecting, I traverse the garden, the world—but soon I pass the gates,
Now along the pond-side—now wading in a little, fearing not the wet …
Everything here is yellow and green
the ground, that winter nightmare,
has cured its sores and burst
with green birds and vitamins
The bees are flying. They taste the spring.
I took a broken root to fling
Where the proud, wayward squirrel went,
Taking delight that he could spring
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
Notes and Credits
T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, ll. 1-4
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, #38, These, I, Singing in Spring, ll. 1, 4-5
Anne Sexton, It is a Spring Afternoon, ll. 1, 30-32
Sylvia Plath, Wintering, l. 50
W. B. Yeats, An Appointment, ll. 2-4
Robert Frost, A Prayer in Spring, ll. 1, 13-14
All the photos were taken by the writer in Prospect Park, Brooklyn – except for the white roses, which bloom every year in Tom and Laura’s backyard in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The squirrel is the most recent, taken as he chopped up and dropped leaves and twigs and flowers on all of us baseball parents while our children were at practice last week.
For the W. B. Yeats poem, I credit Jim Tolstrup, who posted on this poem and squirrels and anarchy a couple months ago.
truth and rocket science 
beautiful photos, i especially like the yellow flowers
What I liked in that photo was the little buildings in the background with the pitched roofs. Makes me think of the country even though this was in the middle of Bklyn.
WOW, you guys still have daffodils & tulips? Climate differences, how awesome, ours died off about 3 weeks ago here on the upper left coast. Your pictures were like a gentle whisper of recency to my retinas.
Spring does have a way of making us (ok, me, since I should only speak for myself) giddy about being Earth denizens. Through the antihistamine fog, anyway. 😉
Well, actually photos are mainly fro last year, except for the squirrel, which was from last week. But I took all those pics last year and was so diligent about flowers and I wanted to use them and kind of will Spring into existence here… and I had all these cute squirrel photos. Even cuter ones I left out. I love living by the park. The magnolia petals on the sidewalk are perhaps my favorite. The bee was a good catch, though focused on the flower and not the bee. Still… spring is good. It just feels good. Baseball. Flowers. Breezes.
poetic:-) “for this is love and nothing else is love.” so good.
the petals on the sidewalk work for me.
plus the bee photos
love bees
Your photos are glorious. Rich, vivid colours that just shout SPRING. I love every one.
Thanks again Selma. Living by a park is wonderful. This morning as I went running, there was a lawn blowing tournament or something going on. Blew mind, so cool. Such an old fashioned thing to do, and people of all races, Asian, Black, Latino, whites, mixed-races, just like the nabe here. The only ones missing were Hasidic Jews and the Bangladeshis, but perhaps they don’t do lawn bowling. The park is a great source of life here.
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