Spring Awakening

The witch­hazels pick things up where their autumn cousins left off. You can imag­ine them tak­ing off a pad­lock and rolling back the ware­house door. Their straps seem the striped yel­low over­all straps of orna­men­tal work­men; they smell of oil. 

Snow­drops are very sculpt­ed. Some­one fed up with win­ter might well have had to invent them. They are a lit­tle over­thought to tell the truth. 

As the cro­cus­es emerge they seem a cat­a­log for forth­com­ing pub­li­ca­tions; because they are minute and var­ied. They do not seem to com­mit them­selves much or to much need being com­mit­ted to. 

I always for­get that when for­syth­ia start they look like lit­tle bananas. They tend to start too ear­ly, and you can pic­ture them in a sprint from the gates of the sta­di­um and only look­ing behind them­selves too late as the crowd starts laughing. 

I do not like the helle­bores. They live on an old lady’s sidetable. 

But then hyacinths, the spiky ones, belong on a straw hat in the best way. Your drunk aunt and uncle come up to you at your wed­ding with bou­ton­nieres of hyacinth. Grape hyacinths are sil­ly because they look like grapes. 

A scil­la is a com­plete thought at every scale. 

I only found out recent­ly that a vin­ca is a peri­win­kle. Who has ever seen the bud for one of their flow­ers? You come out one day and there they are, pinned to the vine. Peo­ple rea­son the exis­tence of fairies back from things like this. 

At this point you can look straight through a yel­low daf­fodil. When they come white and small with orange trum­pets I pic­ture men at work again, just screw­ing the new trum­pets in. 

(May 2019)