Through the Needle of Spring

Do you feel this way?

I truly do feel as though spring is like passing through the eye of a needle.

We are starving for the longer days and warmer weather almost as though we are holding our breath.

Then one day it is just here.

Nature's best magic show. The tickling of green on the trees, the budding of the spring bulbs, the trick of the magnolia opening before our eyes.

The eye of that needle gets smaller and smaller as the hot days arrive and spring is over.

Field Guide
by Billy Collins

No one I ask knows the name of the flower
we pulled the car to the side of the road to pick
and that I point to dangling purple from my lapel.

I am passing through the needle of spring
in North Carolina, as ignorant of the flowers of the south
as the woman at the barbecue stand who laughs
and the man who gives me a look as he pumps the gas

and everyone else I ask on the way to the airport
to return to where this purple madness is not seen
blazing against the sober pines and rioting along the
roadside.

On the plane, the stewardess is afraid she cannot answer
my question, now insistent with the fear that I will leave
the province of this flower without its sound in my ear.

Then, as if he were giving me the time of day, a passenger
looks up from his magazine and says wisteria.


Hope the joy of spring is with you.