Last Spring, Lost Spring by Charuvi Khandelwal

We miss the most what we've lived and lost. People, places, songs, movies, books, and seasons. Do they miss us too? Today, we think of spring, love, colours, the bounce in our walk, mist, incomplete conversations, once in a lifetime moments. As pretty as all these seem, they're addictive and they make a brat out of us. We can survive in the bear minimum, too. But what is life without fresh flowers and someone to give them to, on wax stamped love letters.

Artwork: Spring by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Source: Obelisk Art History.

In this spirit, here are some poems to water the memories and have some spring in this summer.

Spring Scent

By Aiman Khan

Woke up to a whiff. The morning

hung yesterday's despair

on the deceptive rope of time,

a mosaic of colors popped in

with the delicate pearls of light.

Ep-uh-derm-us merrily fell to the ground

crumbling beneath the weight of beginnings.

Wasps from the orchard buzzed. It's Spring!

The Thrush

By Edward Thomas

When Winter's ahead, What can you read in November That you read in April When Winter's dead?

I hear the thrush, and I see Him alone at the end of the lane Near the bare poplar's tip, Singing continuously.

Is it more that you know Than that, even as in April, So in November, Winter is gone that must go?

Or is all your lore Not to call November November, And April April, And Winter Winter—no more?

But I know the months all, And their sweet names, April, May and June and October, As you call and call

I must remember What died into April And consider what will be born Of a fair November;

And April I love for what It was born of, and November For what it will die in, What they are and what they are not,

While you love what is kind, What you can sing in And love and forget in All that's ahead and behind.

Crisscross

By Arthur Sze

Meandering across a field with wild asparagus, I write with my body the characters for grass, water, transformation, ache to be one with spring. Biting into watermelon, spitting black seeds onto a plate, I watch the eyes of an Armenian accordion player, and before dropping a few euros into his brown cap, smell sweat and fear. I stay wary of the red horse, Relámpago, latch the gate behind me; a thorned Russian olive branch arcs across the path below my forehead, and, approaching the Pojoaque River, I recall the sign, beware pickpockets, find backhoe tracks, water diverted into a ditch. Crisscrossing the stream, I catch a lightning flash, the white- capped Truchas peaks, behind, to the east, and in the interval between lightning and thunder, as snow accumulates on black branches, the chasm between what I envision and what I do.

***

For the love of art,

Charuvi