Mark Butler’s most recent poem to appear here was “October 9” (October 2017). 

Early Spring
By Mark Butler

On this first bright day
the brick walls at school
are warm and the kids
lean into the soft heat.

At the public library, no one
is lounging at the tables or
snoring in the carrels.

A display window at the jewelry store,
long populated with hand-glazed winter birds,
is awash in a spray of yellow finches.

Mother Jane offers Eucharist at noon,
the doors left open, her voice drifting,
sunlight ticking across cold stone,
her comfortable words ascending.

School lets out at three and the roaring,
grinding busses are muted by laughter,
shouting, the dome of blue sky.

And the ground, so long frozen,
has eased a bit by dusk,
a comfort to those wandering
home across the ball fields.