[RCL]

Hocus Crocus

We’re the focus
and the locus
when springs soak us
not to choke us
or to croak us
but provoke us
and re-stoke us
to invoke us—
so earth spoke us!

[Roger Slater]

Spectator No. 3241 called for spring triolets. The thread is probably still there if you search for it. Here's mine that they published:

Every spring I quite forget
that this is just a ritual.
The warmth performs its show, and yet
every spring I quite forget
that spring is how a trap gets set.
My folly is habitual.
Every spring I quite forget
that this is just a ritual.

Actually, I just saw that they published a second one of mine (under my Erato name, Roger Slater):

I tried to write a triolet
about my love of spring
and found I had but this to say:
‘I tried to write a triolet
in praise of April, June and May
but ended up just blathering
“I tried to write a triolet
about my love of spring.”’

[Julie Steiner]

The arroyo toad,
to call a mate, will unload
falsetto farts. For a week, it won't desist.
No wonder it's on the endangered species list.

The mockingbird
can also be heard
making a gawdawful racket all night long,
while I grow surer Atticus Finch was wrong.

[RCL]

Roger Bob and Julie, thanks for prodding the essence of spring! Isn't "to kill a mockingbird" a metaphor for "to kill a poet" or any storyteller? Is to me.

[Julie Steiner]

Yes, Ralph, that seems to be what Robert Frost was getting at, too, in his "A Minor Bird."

But patience has its limits.

I read once that mockingbirds' main predators are Great Horned Owls, but they're noisy at night, too.

[Roger Slater]

Spring has sprung,
the grass has risen.
Let Trump be hung,
or at least in prison.

Okay, I know it's "hanged," but what the heck.

[RCL]

My Mockingbards

Mockingbirds that mimic tunes
of springtime’s robins, larks and doves
can even voice the laughs of loons.
These avian thieves that echo tunes
inspire the bards who croon of moons
and Junes when courting their coy loves
with words that resonate the tunes
of loons, spring robins, larks and doves.

From Asses of Parnassus

[RCL]

For the millions who have never heard of grade-school themes about rainbows and palettes.

Spring’s Palettes

April rainbows are spring’s palettes
for painting over winter’s whiteness
with yellow, orange, green and violet,

indigo, red and blue, all drawing
bees and hummingbirds to sip
the wildest liquors (never brewed!),

those nectars deep in blooming flowers.
But our Artist reviews details
(pentimenti?), each season alters:

chiaroscuro, colors warm
to hot, those cool to cold, the strong
to weak and pale—then, unseen prism

tints, the essence of life’s light,
are every spring’s immortal palette.

[Roger Slater]

This was written for LIGHT's "impossible rhyme" feature. I can't remember if they published it:

EARLY SPRING

The dew looks like silver
bedecking the lawn
in the shimmering chill ver-
nal light of the dawn.

[Roger Slater]

And this from my book of children's poems, though it was originally written for a contest that required the use of the word "nascent":

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

Last year the spring came early. My snowman faced his doom.
The birds were still in Florida as trees began to bloom

and warmth returned to push aside the winter in its prime.
Last year the spring came early. It's coming late this time.

The birds who are returning find their nesting branches bare,
and some have never glimpsed before a snowman's coal-eyed stare.

My snowman gives the birds a wink, then melts away at last.
The nascent blossoms burst their buds. And winter's finally past.