Late Spring

I'm just coming here today with a poem I'd love to share--one of my favorites. It's called "Late Spring" by Robert Hass, and I always think of it during this time of year. I think it's about how our lives become marked by routine and tradition. It's about celebrating the change of seasons, living in the present, and how quickly yet mysteriously time passes when we are engaged in the dailiness of life.

I hope you enjoy it. May the light enlarge your days this spring; may your evenings be full of wine and story-telling until long after the sun has descended. ~Lib.

LATE SPRING

And then in mid-May the first morning of steady heat,

the morning, Leif says, when you wake up, put on shorts, and that's 

it for the day,

when you pour coffee and walk outside, blinking in the sun.

Strawberries have appeared in the markets, and peaches will soon;

squid is so cheap in the fishstores you begin to consult Japanese and 

Italian cookbooks for the various ingenious ways of preparing ika

and calamari;

and because the light will enlarge your days, your dreams at night 

will be as strange as the jars of octopus you saw once in a 

fisherman's boat under the summer moon;

and after swimming, white wine; and the sharing of stories before 

dinner is prolonged because the relations of the children in the 

neighborhood have acquired village intensity and the stories take 

longer telling;

and there are the nights when the fog rolls in that nobody likes — 

hey, fog, the Miwok sang, who lived here first, you better go home, 

pelican is beating your wife —

and after dark in the first cool hour, your children sleep so heavily in 

their beds exhausted from play, it is a pleasure to watch them,

Leif does not move a muscle as he lies there; no, wait; it is Luke who 

lies there in his eight-year-old body,

Leif is taller than you are and he isn't home; when he is, his feet will 

extend past the end of the mattress, and Kristin is at the corner in 

the dark, talking to the neighborhood boys;

things change; there is no need for this dream-compelled narration; 

the rhythm will keep me awake, changing.       

--Robert Hass