Tomorrow is the start of spring in my part of the world.

I would like to share two poems that herald the arrival of my favourite season. One is my own, and one is by the English poet Philip Larkin.

Both hold sadness and hope in equal measure. Nothing is either this, or that. Even the most wonderful beginning holds an ending. These poems reflect that.

My poem is called “Tomorrow”.

 

TOMORROW

Even the laundry

with its sleepy smell of crisping linen

is an ode to what is over;

The washing machine’s whirr and thump no longer the busy symphony

of domestic comfort,

but of what one must do

to get through.

A benign legion of bees rejoice and hum and sup,

drowsy and blissful,

at the blossom tree that has transformed my winter windows

to an erotic riot of pink and tui.

Wings crack and swish, branches swoop and shake.

My cat presses his face, hot and earthy from the sun, to mine.

He chirps, his heart a bird.

It will be spring tomorrow.

 

THE TREES, by Philip Larkin

 

The trees are coming into leaf

Like something almost being said;

The recent buds relax and spread,

Their greenness is a kind of grief.

 

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,

Their yearly trick of looking new

Is written down in rings of grain.

 

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.

Last year is dead, they seem to say,

Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.