Ah, March, Spring's Preface

In spite of the 'b-r-r-r-risk' beginning to the week we may still feel optimistic
because it's March and sunny today! and we can look forward to temps minus
the minus-dash in front of the digit😁

 ...an expansion of Saturday's poem March Mosaic 

because it barely brushed the surface of Spring's Preface!

 (my, how we welcome those bashful buds that begin to stir in greenhouses and grocery-stores!)

The girth of earth is brown with mud and mirth of winter’s waning tide

A modest panoramic wake of mute and matted countryside

The joy of expectation poised on thatched patchwork of bronze and brass

Waits at a gate with baited breath for innocence of soft green grass

The dark wind wails and waves a wand of pussy-willow pillowed fronds

Where rusty reeds like ragamuffins shiver in ditches and ponds

The bashful bud begins to stir beneath the whisper of a dream

And hope makes dreamers of us all where winter has run out of steam

Anticipation is a gift that keeps the weight of dread at bay

March grants to weathered hearts a lift where blue and gold duels with gray

The distance between here and there excites and invites us to dance

Upon a welcome mat where morning wears the air of first romance

The saucy robins reappears and cheers us with its lusty trill

The kiss of sun is warm and charms the chill of storm to giddy thrill

The pitter-pat of rain-drop splat is like laughter or music-notes

Because we know within its flow a wonder-world of flowers floats

Those white decoys that March deploys is but Jack Frost's noisy retreat

A blust'ring bit of fluff-bluff as gruff ruffians fall to defeat

Where canvases of color throb beneath the somber aftermath

Of gales, as violet-gilded trails emerge to purge death from earth's path

And picnic-baskets find frayed blankets on brook-banks, in meadow-rooms

Ah March, your stiff-starched orderlies sweep out the world with woolly brooms

On battlefields where winter yields but not without one last fierce fling

Ah March, you are the age-old star that leads us from winter to spring

© Janet Martin