It Is Spring Poem by Morgan Michaels

It is Spring. Swallows fill the sky
Nature shows a one-day plush of stubble
that in times to come will double and redouble
itself greenly over the fields and dandle softly off trees.

We, as men, do what we can
to recall Spring's theme:
less so now than before, maybe,
but there's still something awesome in it,

something vatic? - the under-song,
as when standing beside Niagara or somesuch cataract,
our particularity dwarfed in immensity,
we're bidden to enter its onde,

and drown in sweeping access (or repudiation)
of that democracy spoon-fed childhood.
What should we do, then, go or stay?
Sing or play dumb?

At the corner stands an old hydrant, sentinel against fire,
wearing a silver collar and cap of gleaming sun
Troughs of iron score its sides, sun dogs
appear in its watery effluence and vanish.

A life buoy to the neighborhood, it is,
for, mercury rising, it chills the fester
of anger and envy that might else wise bloom in anyone's breast:
then, the fathers (angels with wrenches?) promptly appear

loosening sluices. till
a second child gleefully doffs its smutta
to blend its antics with a first's:
and soon many are laughing, bending, squealing

in a musical circle of sizzling water-patter
sung by the hydrant, loosed by the angel
(I mean, the father) Children all
hopping from gutter to curb, curb to gutter,

watched, invisibly...