Spring Tide in Missouri

©. 2010 Olan L. Smith

Yards green with life ― neighbor's box garden

Heaped with black soil and this afternoon I will see her toil,

Wipe her brow and then labor more the dirt of death

To make it yield its fertility.

A pair of turtle doves, wings whistling to nearest bough,

Always in twos, lovers for life not a second less or more,

While bluebirds sit on grape arbors budding in continuation,

As though from a winter's nap they yawn and twine.

Daffodils limp

Yellow pedals stroke the earth

But tulips reinstate their glory,

As nature's cycle unfurls in vividness.

Redbud trees bloom in stately manner and dogwoods wait their outing.

Our Hawthorn is our state flower, far from sea or shore,

Yet our inland beauty is par none though

All will rightfully claim their homeland is most glorious.

Hades surrenders Persephone and she rises to Gaia's surface.

Her mother, Demeter, smiles and spring resumes once again

And harvest will soon come. Teresa sharpens her sickle

Awaiting her winter wheat to ripen.

Squirrels scurry about and chatter

Trying to remember where they buried those nuts,

While earthworms churn dirt-to-dirt

And Earth-to-earth.

The fisher places spade into ground and turns the soil

And in delight she uncovers live lure, turning worm

Into her hunger's dinner plate — she places worm on hook,

Hook on line, line to pole and plops the living snare

In water and watches for bobber to bob.

Next, she reels in lure

Setting her barb deep within

The cavernous mouth of a hungry bass.

Cleaning the seized fish she watches a robin hop nearby

Tilting its head from left to right listening for a sound of a grub or worm,

The bird snatches a feast and off it flies with worm wiggling

From beak and perches in a yellow spirea shrub.

Here she has built a nest and laid her progeny,

And now to gaping mouths she offers her capture of sacrificial life.

As the fisher travels homeward she surveys

Squirrels digging in loam discovering their hidden treasures

And those unfound will spring forth saplings, and with fortune

And space, mighty trees.

Zeus is happy for Hades has released his daughter,

Born of Demeter, but for six months, no more or less,

Then she will depart both mother and father traveling

Deep into the depths of Hell to reclaim her rightful place in her wedded bliss.

All of Gaia's facade will wilt,

But fear not the harvest is in storage and nuts have fallen to fertile ground.

Round and round it goes as long as balance is set as our orb orbits

Sol and the tilting world does rotate we remain safe.

Long ago Mother Gaia, from a wandering world unknown,

Suffered an impact while her surface was molten fury

And with a spray quite huge; mother Gaia leaned her head,

Twenty-three and a half degrees

For Invader; its iron core remained,

But the Abysmal Mother held it tighter than tight,

While it struggled to be free pulling ever outward

And accumulated its dispersed debris the two finally agreed.

Now, we call her Luna and she reflect Helios

Giving light to night she raises the tide

For the sun is equilibrium of our spheres

And is minister of winter with spring.

Sol not being denied its warming rays

Gives birth to summer but the balance reclaims the heat

And Persephone returns to her wedded home

Permitting Snow to blow, winds to howl,

While cuddled beneath heavy coverlets;

Humans pray God, for spring.

.   Photos by, Olan L. Smith