National Poetry Month--Spring Willows

(© Copyright Rod Allday and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence, http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1754484)

Spring Willows

Willows shrug off winter
and don yellow just before
springing into a green canopy
over daffodil leaves
shooting through the ground
and weeks ahead of
cottonwood and ash
that still look dead.
Their bare boughs long for
lush willow green
in early spring.
--copyright Jane Heitman Healy, 2013

(photo by doviende Pete, Creative Commons http://www.flickr.com/photos/doviende/82719704/)


Where I live, we are still teeter-tottering between winter and spring, though our snow is almost all gone. It's so hopeful to see the willows turn from brown to yellow--new life stirring--and then burst into green well before the other deciduous trees. That's where we are, folks, waiting for green. Here's to spring and to National Poetry Month!

(photo by Neil Turner, Creative Commons, http://www.flickr.com/photos/neilt/4736647/)