The Spring Poem

Everyone should write a spring poem—Louise Glück

Yes, but we must be sure of verities
such as proper heat and adequate form.
That’s what poets are for, is my theory.
This then is a spring poem. A car warms
its rusting hulk in a meadow; weeds slog
up its flanks in martial weather. April
or late March is our month. There is a fog
of spunky mildew and sweaty tufts spill
from the damp rump of a backseat. A spring
thrusts one gleaming tip out, a brilliant tooth
uncoiling from winter’s tension, a ring
of insects along, working out the Truth.
Each year this car, melting around that spring,
hears nails trench from boards and every squeak sing.

 

Dave Smith
from his book Floating on Solitude
University of Illinois Press, 1996
reprinted with permission of the poet

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