A March Quartet (IV)

DEATH will have its night; Life will have its day. 
 This is the world we're born into, this is the mortal way,
 
AS FLOWERS feel the sun despite the vast all-over cold -- 
 We're born to live, to learn, to feel, and maybe, to get old, 

WHEN WE must put our petals down, and give in to the earth;
 For death will have its night, and day will have its birth.

A March Quartet (III)

THERE'S ONE DAY cold, the next day warm, 
 The Spring, capricious in its whim; 
  The child runs and plays in snow, 
   Then sees a next when all will swim
   In streams and pools of sunny March,
  Beside green fields of Summer-soon:
 There's one day white, the next day green; 
It's all a ludicrous cartoon.

THE FIELD, it beckons to the young, 
 And to the old, the in-between; 
  But soon the wind will keening come, 
   And gray and white will cover green. 
   There is a rhythm, mad and great, 
  That all must learn and feel to know 
 We think that we're in charge, when we 
Are just part of the ebb and flow.

A March Quartet (I)

THE WIND blows hollow, from the South; 
 The mind shrinks back in wondering -- 
   Yours was the waiting, Winter heart, 
   Somnolent hopes, all slumbering -- 

There is no din, just Nature's voice, 
 Clear as the stab of stricken pain: 
   Those who you call, won't come again, 
   Those you have loved have moved away. 

The Cold's not gone, it's in your bones, 
 It's in the way you slowed-down move; 
   Yours was the Heart that gave, and all -- 
   Body and mind and cash and food -- 
 
In chapters written sans regret, 
 You spent all the Spring you had within: 
   This wound is the sword of grief's sharp edge, 
   Ubiquitous part of human kin.