I seem to write poems every spring and fall. By now I’ve concluded that the sensory attributes of these seasons are wound into my body. This is a good time for writing. The earth awakes and promises metaphor galore (sorry). Examine your back yard or just a tiny patch of it and write down everything you see—or draw something you see. Perhaps you’ll have the beginnings of a poem, story or painting. May your creativity Spring eternal! -Pam Sexton
Recording a Season
Late March in Kentucky
Clatter of squirrels’ nails
on tree bark pulls me to perform
a busy scramble—
theirs for lost nuts, mine, the usual—
all folly, I know.
Slow…slow…
listen for the quickening,
catch it, post it.
Buy paper heavy with tooth,
pastels pregnant with landscape;
smooth with fingers
until pigment enters your skin
feel the green,
its velvet resurrection
hear the sky shout
its white, then blue
see worm track, lichen patch
on earth and rock.
Record the slow destruction
of the indestructible—
slow as centuries and as sure.
But the newness,
catch it, post it,
Get it down.
Quick. It’s glory.
Pam Sexton
March 2010