4 Seasons

April 11 2017

She told me once

it takes all 4 seasons

to be sure.

Because love begins in summer

walks hand-in-hand in fall,

shares the same stale air

in winter's cramped fortress.

But is tested in spring,

when the frozen soil warms

green shoots unfurl,

blooms strike colour

into a dull brown world.

Petals, recklessly beckoning

the subtle attraction of scent.

Who isn't tempted

to re-invent themselves

in all this intensity?

Stepping-out

into sweet mild air.

The feel of sun

on impervious skin

unaccustomed to touch.

Made restless, and rash

by the lengthening day

softening light.

Urgently aware

of the fecundity of life

and its merciless transience.

The flowers of spring

are their own wedding bouquet

and funeral march.

Because life is short;

summer over

almost as soon as it starts.

It's very early days, and I naturally started to write about spring ...like a million other boring predictable poems before this one! But then, thinking about seasons, I remembered what she once said. Which gave me an entree into a poem about relationship: one that could be built on the scaffold of seasons, but be more than merely descriptive.

How it got from there to a poem about temptation, and even infidelity, is the mystery of the creative act. But spring has that paradoxical effect. There is the inspiration of new life and new beginnings, set against the awareness of the transience of that life: the sobering awareness that inertia is slow death; and that if you don't do it now, you may never.