Creative Expressions is a space for local poets and writers to share their work and is supported by the Lake County Arts Council. For more information and to submit your original work, email rvschmidt2@gmail.com.
Party
By Ceebee Butzbach
Spring is a party for the birds and the bees
It awakens from dormancy deciduous trees
See its effect on the branches above
The way people’s interests turn to love
Bushes in woods we once thought were dead
Sprout outlandish new growth; it goes to our heads
Entranced, we beseech Spring not to end
‘Cause Spring is a party that everyone attends.
Conditional Spring
By Lourdes Thuesen
If you come in Spring,
I will give you the tanager
flashing orange and black
from branch to branch in the greening oak
If you come in Spring
I will show you
the blue heron
standing by water’s edge
silent and still as an ancient priest
in an Incan prayer cave
If you come in Spring
I will walk with you in the garden
where lavender tips open
in purple flags
and the persimmon trees leaf out
in distant autumn promise
If you come in Spring
we will watch the lake at sunset
when gold transforms to pink and mauve and inky violet
sketching the hills like hulking shoulders of the sleepy earth
If you come in Spring
we will sing in the sweet showers,
laugh at the honking of homing Canada geese,
marvel at the green tenderness of fields,
plant tomatoes, squash and eggplant,
snuggle against the still chilly nights
If you come in spring,
if you come at all.
Renaissance of Nature
By Jaka
Sinewy limbs of Herculean oaks
flex against the fading night
as the waking sun deftly bestows
patterns of luminous light
over crust scaled trunks,
over lichen laced branches,
where resinous splayed fingers
dangle whorls
of tightly furled leaves
flushed pink by spring’s arrival.
In this season of transition,
a few rebellious leaves of fall
still cling.
