Early Spring

by Russell Rowland

Crocuses pop out in suspect places.
Surely that is not where we planted them.

The pathways flood, everything is flowing
downhill to some primordial genesis.

A Girl Scout sweet talks us into macaroons,
entreating like spring peepers on wet land.

Mud season: fledgling birds all mouth,
the baby field mice without any hair.

Men in plaid shirts read warrant articles:
vote to pave their dirt road, but not ours.

A garden now is open for us to stroll,
eyes a-brim with wonder. But if we see

our shadows, then we must go back to sleep.

(Russell Rowland is a Troubadour reader from Meredith, NH)

petals

by Nancy Grossman

an elderly man swiftly conveys his crystal vase
of dead tulips
out the front door of the old Portsmouth Customs Building
in a hurry, with a purpose, through the snow.
a delivery man from an alternate universe
rushing dead flowers to Jardinière the florist

I might not notice
but for the tulip petals he strews behind him
as he Hansel-and-Gretel’s his way down the sidewalk
in the low winter light

he strews his petals before me,
ragged parrot tulip petals
in Renaissance reds and yellows

he leads me through low winter light,
a shill for the purveyors of the perfumes of spring

(Nancy Grossman is a Troubadour reader from Portsmouth, NH)