The Same Lady

By JEAN ANNETTE NICHOLS

I. I hear April‘s shudder of gutter lakes,
limbering roots and mud flowing
slick and rich as gravy
in rutted dirt roads, bubbling
along corner lawns walked bare
and seething between the untarred
city slots where the earth leaks
over macadam and cement:
April’s ooze and worked-up sweat
making a job of the season.
And I reason that mud
is a sweet old girl’s ageless
glands gone wild again for love’,
a girl blown lilac-windy and
risen to her sweet numb knees.

II. Fat old lady Spring again.
No sylphlike girl this
bud waddle, green swaddling
and full-grown winds
warning: “Appreciate.” We
return to that old juice
hoping to stay loose, stay
loose. But few of us impervious
to May can stand the stake of roses
in the heart, and not go gay,
go adolescent and roundelay,
roundelay. Voom go the pom pom
buds and grasses, slurp goes the sap;
and the pap of the world lifts up, up
to these old humdrum lips; and fe, fo,
fi, fum, this beanstalk giant
tumbles head over shin into
the sweet obesity of Spring.