White violets and woodsmoke,
Good dogs and bad boys
Fooling around down in the ravine,
Wet sneakers, reborn worms, raindrops on lilacs,
Cool, budding air you can drink like an aphrodisiac,
And all the things that April means.
Spring grass in horses’ teeth,
The joy of damp dirt and soft ground giving underfoot,
Starlight in mud-puddles,
New trails scratched out in front of den holes
And the scent of sweet decay.
Wild onions, fresh chives,
Last year’s nests falling out of trees,
Mist on the moon and bird fights in the morning,
Sap cracking pine bark, ice hissing under new waterfalls,
The sounds of war and peace.
Spring before it’s sprung,
Bright moss and broken branches,
Turtle eggs, torn fur, old cracked tennis balls,
Skunk cabbage and white-washed skeletons–
Bones so architecturally perfect they beg to be picked up.
This is the crack between the seasons
Nature’s lost and found
Where what once was meets what will be for awhile
Dark, tramped down feathers of an old broken wing
And the heavens full of singing.
Wendy Insinger is a professional writer who spent her high school years in East Falls, PA. After completing a B.A., Anthropology (Barnard College) and an M.A., English (Brown University, writing program), she was a Contributing Editor at “Town&Country” Magazine for 14 years. She has written for “Vanity Fair”, “Islands”, and numerous other publications, as well as being a monthly columnist for “Horse Show” and “County Life”. She is the co-author of The Complete Book of Thoroughbred Horseracing (Doubleday, 1981). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as, “Chronogram”, “DIRT”, and “River Poets Journal”. She lives in Warwick, NY.