The first lines of this poem came to me as I was driving home in the evening and saw a lone white tree flowering in the woods near the highway’s edge.

“Spring’s Reprise”

The wild fruit trees are white with spring;
The redbuds are empurpling
The brown and green and gray
Of winter’s gentle passing away.

Spring but briefly alights on a branch;
It will not long delay, but soon
Will wing upon the wind
And softly flit away.

And in its wake, more greens will come,
And longer days and hotter sun.
Then summer, too, will fly away,
Leaving ripened fruit and ready hay.

Autumn approaches, slow at first,
A gentle quenching of summer’s thirst—
Cooler breeze and shorter days,
And morning fog the sun delays.

Then frost on ground and empty trees,
And winter’s slow embrace, that
Vise-like grips the world with cold,
While days grow short and nights grow old.

But winter at last will restless grow,
Like all the ones that came before,
And though its rousing may be slow,
Soon, it shall rise and also go.

The wild fruit trees are white with spring;
The redbuds are unfurling
Their purple, as the leaves around
Exchange for greens their brown.

And birdsong rises with the sun,
Till winter has been overcome,
And little spring alights again,
With its reprise our hearts to win.