Spring Chorus

spring

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The Blue Tit
Sunny Corner
To Fly a Kite
To hell with thee, bright morning
Summer '72


The Blue Tit

spring

The Blue Tit sits on the orchard bough
her avian mind consults the now:
springsun and flowers and crows and bugs
she perches she poses she sniffs the breeze
springshe shrugs and sings, "I'm quite at ease
springwith sun and flowers
springattending the hours
springas if things were planned to do as i please"
"That's what i think," the Blue Tit sings
springon the orchard bough
springblithely folding her wings.

©Laurie Ashton, mmiii

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Sunny Corner

spring

There's sometimes a sunny corner
springjust nicely in the shade
where gloom can gather glimmer
spring and no remarks are made

where daffodils or tulips
spring spring-born delight to show
they love the clement weather
spring and they are good to know

springwhere love has planted seed
a garden fit is raised
spring and folk go arm-in-arm
through rows of life amazed

there's sometimes a sunny corner
spring to watch proceedings from
a garden in a nutshell
spring a place when no-one's home

©Laurie Ashton, spring '99

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To fly a kite

spring

To fly a kite light in the sky
spring a streamer-cloud balloons blowing children hallo-ing
looking up wide-eyed

i'd rather be born again
than died in the wool at schoolspring head bent over
spring perusing paper with inkblots scrawls marks
spring for a hundred per cent the ultimate

spring flip your lid! fly that kite! watch it duck as we tug
leaping eager to clamber out of sight
spring kids must be wrong as well as right
trust as strong as a heart-string can pull us down to earth
spring for a rebirth

spring those desks they sit in
with lids like kettles over ids
spring simmering
spring scrawled on blackboards like toilet-walls
'two and two make four' spring (raise your hand when you know the score)

spring jericho blow! fanfare of hope! eye's opening wider
greeting the spider's web of kite trails in cloud-streamers
spring of windwards blowing children ho-hoing like Buddha

spring lap it up! whoop it up!
kittycat can look at the queen
spring where have you been lately spring growing up?

©Laurie Ashton, mmi revised [197_?]

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To hell with thee

spring

Oh, to hell with thee, bright morning
spring who with thy one good eye
startles my coiled senses
spring into dazed antipathy

go spin thy sticky spider's web
spring to catch the flies and dew
surprise the bloodless lily
spring who may see her petals droop
or send the morning glory up
spring a fence to reach the top

thou order'st
spring they can't resist
the mad engendering
spring but i possess the state they miss
and spurn thine urgent ambience

so toil away with cocksure vim
spring but withdraw the importunate summons
thy mandate sooner i'd ignore
spring than break my snoring sacrament
for i was old when thou wert born
spring summary impertinent may dawn

©Laurie Ashton, '99 [c. '74]

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Summer, '72

spring

Once upon a goodly Summertime
there fell a Winter wind
and i fell ill
sick at heart
wilfully whimpering
whimsically caught
like a parachuted seed
on a splintered limb
that might otherwise
gladly land anywhere
to coax the cold earth
through the pale year
to burst into Spring
blossoming

©Laurie Ashton, mm

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