Every season of the year has its purpose and place, and when it comes to spring, it’s hard not to think of the word “beginning.”Plants grow new roots, buds, and blooms; days start to lengthen as they get closer to the summer solstice; and with warmer weather, the world around us seems to wake up.
Many people celebrate a new year during the spring season: Lunar New Year, Nowruz (Persian New Year), and the Western astrological new year all fall within this transition from frost to flourishing.
In the midst of winter, we might have fallen into hibernation along with the natural world. Maybe we rested, stayed indoors, or even felt a little blue in the calendar’s darker days. So it’s no wonder that the first green shoots of budding flowers, or the steadily returning sunshine, make us feel a little lighter.
The melody of language can help us celebrate this season of newness and growth. Below, we’ve collected excerpts from poems that speak to the joys of spring. As the legendary Beatles once sang: “Here comes the sun, and I say — it’s all right.”
it’s spring(all our night becomes day)o, it’s spring! / all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky
e.e. cummings, “when faces called flowers”
I died, and was born in the spring; / I found you, and loved you, again.
Mary Oliver, “Hummingbirds”
Ask me of the song and I will tell / of the rain’s slow murmur.
Ocean Vuong, “Despite Everything, My Dancers”
Under cherry blossoms’ shade / even those whom we don’t know / are not strangers
Kobayashi Issa, untitled haiku
If ever there were a spring day so perfect, / so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze / that it made you want to throw / open all the windows in the house
A Light exists in Spring / Not present on the Year / At any other period
Emily Dickinson, Poem 812
And then there is the spring park, / damp as if freshly peeled, sweet / greenhouse, green cemetery with no / dead in it.
Sharon Olds, “Years Later”
in the brief moment of their flourish, / at the opening of spring, I drove across state lines to gather peonies for a woman / who loved me once.
Hanif Abdurraqib, “How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This”
I’ve been waiting long for a spring song. / Strong as the shoots of a new plant / Strong as the bursting of new buds / Strong as the coming of the first child from its mother’s womb.
“An Earth Song” by Langston Hughes
Featured Image Credit: jacqylaw/ iStock
Paola Bennet
Paola Bennet is a writer based in Brooklyn, NY. She writes a fortnightly newsletter that treasures the mundane, called Small Histories. Find her on Instagram @paolafbennet.
