When I lay on the mellow green

Of the earth

who fosters me like one of its

missing child,

making me drunk on the honey comb

Filtered juice that warms my flesh

from a far away driven sight

and jewel me with its dirt

that smells as though

my entrails have been hidden within,

bewitching me to call it a home.

The autumn wavers its hello

in its brown and crusty foundation

but it feels as if

the spring has crawled on me

Lightly bruising my cuticle,

All naked and archaic

as though It has been waiting for me;

To be the fragrance of the woods

again to be someone

I have always meant to be.

and here I am,

sitting at my teacher’s desk,

tasting coffee, black and rich,

as morning mist dissipates

from the field where children play.

We will hire a sitter, my wife and I,

go out for a night,

eat food in a restaurant

(three quarter capacity)

where we will overcome nerves,

remember menus and tip well, and

we will give thanks to

something, someone,

fate, God, the nurse who

stabbed salvation to our veins…

We breathe,

we taste and smell and feel,

we see this spring,

and I will never understand

why we have lost so little.

“Some stories say that Hades kidnapped Persephone while she was picking flowers in a meadow during spring, married her, and tricked her into staying with him for six months by having her eat six pomegranate arils. Others say they fell in love with each other, were willingly married, and that she ate those six pomegranate arils because she couldn’t bear to stay away from him for a whole year. Isn’t that a more romantic side of the story than the original?” she remarks, splitting open a pomegranate and picking out its seeds.

“That’s just a silly notion. The gods and goddesses of the ancient Greeks and Romans had nothing better to do with their time, so they created fake deities to occupy their time,” he replies, opening a bottle of honey wine and taking a sip. “Besides, if I was Hades and you were Persephone, I wouldn’t want to spend any second away from you even more than I have to.”

He leans over, buries his head into her shoulder and breathes in her scent. “What would you do if you were her?” he asks.

She smiles. “Pomegranates would be the only fruit I’d eat for the rest of my life.”

There once was a cat. He really liked to watch time go through the window. He watched as summer melted into fall, as fall turned into winter, as spring replaced winter, and as after spring came summer. He watched the seasons change a hundred times and suddenly he realized that he was old. Old as the world.

It was winter's end when he realized this. He also didn't want to celebrate spring like all the other years. He went looking for the spring. The cat reached the city and wondered in every street, looking around every corner looking for spring. But no matter how hard he looked he couldn't find it. There wasn't a soul in the city also who knew where the spring was. The cat was devastated.

Until he found a very old dog. This dog was living in the city's most desolate street. When he first saw the cat, he already knew who he was and what he was looking for. He told the cat how to find spring. And he also told the cat that the cat was young in his heart but old in his appearance. "Lovely old fella" the dog silently laughed. The dog knew that the cat was just a kitten in his heart. As the cat walked away he jumped in a puddle, caught a dead leaf and hummed a little song.

Days passed and the cat did nothing. He waited for spring to come himself. One morning the spring finally came. It was beautiful with blossoms and little rain. The snow slowly melted away. And so did the cat's mind, heart, tail and also his life. Right then, when the cat had seen spring's beginning for one-hundredth time his life melted away fully.

Life returns,

Blossoms bloom,

Birds fly overhead,

Flowers wave and moonlight dances on silver blades of grass,

The river flows once more,

Free from its icy prison,

The fishys prance with nervousness,

At the thought of fishing poles and cannonballers,

Mothers sing as they plant their gardens,

And grandmothers get feisty with spring cleaning,

Children wimper,

Cuts and bruises,

Blood and scabs,

Maybe that will teach them not to jump head first into a pricker bush hiding bunnies.