Wendy Klein’s spring

Primula Vulgaris

is impudent, clusters
conspiratorially between
the slashing leaves of daffodil
bullies that deafen with garish
bugles. Primula Vulgaris
whisper saucy secrets to each other,
creamy heads tipped, the better
to hear; to see what’s happening
below ground, high in trees,
tucked in tangled hedgerows;
is bursting with the mating calls
of birds, news of brittle eggs, fresh-
laid; the urgency of shoots bashing
against the skins of tight seeds.

Don’t be fooled by its demure smiles;
the common primrose knows it all,
but doesn’t muscle in.

.

Rough draft – Easter

Blossoms flare, a mist of pink,
white, grey, smoking out
winter. Leaves so tender

they’ve yet to learn green, well up
like tears. This month aches
with birth and death.

Hedge-row thorns tear at cloth,
at flesh. The fields are full of lambs
that know only the milky teat,

the fug of ewe’s pelt, the beginnings
of a taste for blades of grass. And I
remember the child, faintly drawn

in a Michelangelo sketch, who tugs
at his father’s sleeve, longs to escape
what must come next in the story –

the certainty of loss; the absence
of miracles.

.
.
Wendy Klein is a passionate believer in the curative powers of dogs, belly dancing, and reading poetry out loud. She hopes someone will humanely destroy her if she ceases to be able to enjoy these pleasures.