Seditious Spring

Enemy of corporations,
of governments
and of every school,
Spring distracts us all:
no work is done.
Nothing will be learned.
Dogs will not come home.
Children will not listen.
Spouses rediscover love
in abandoned domesticity
and wine.
And the cat stays out.
And the laundry is not done.
And everyone is ordering
take-out.
Gardens resurrect
and those messy neighbours,
raccoons,
claw the garbage
just like last year.
The sun will not go down,
demanding we not go to bed.
And so we don’t.
And the sun gets up too early
demanding we get up
and so we do,
groggy, cranky
and missing the slipper
the dog ate
in its urge to pee
everywhere.

Spring is silly,
never sober.
It has no love for cubicles
and none for lists
of things-to-do.
Spring won’t clean the house
and will not pay its bills
responsibly.
It walks and runs and
never drives
but will swim,
not because there is a need,
but because there is lake.
It mopes and withdraws
when the sun
stays home
and will not play with it.
Spring’s a child.
A puppy;
kitten.
Spring is an embarrassment
to all the other seasons,
so serious,
so assured,
so important in their work.
They don’t like spring,
the constant reminder
they are born without purpose
except that purpose
Spring provides.
And the purpose of Spring
is just to be
Spring.