Harris Tobias lives and writes novels, songs, and short stories in Charlottesville VA. His second novel, The Greer Agency, is due to be released this spring from All Things That Matter Press. To keep current with his latest work, read his blog. Well, spring can certainly be a shape shifter. This poem makes that point quite finely. Which one are you hoping to see: the rumpled white sheet over the corpse, the green velvet virgin, or the careless whore swollen with seeds? 

Ode to Spring
By Harris Tobias

I have seen you
Spread out before me like a rumpled sheet upon a corpse
Patchy and cold that bloodless white of yours
Is so fine.
Bare trees black
Like wires on a screen are the only mourners
Elsewhere icicle teeth grin mirthless from every eave
While in its white cocoon the new life stirs
And like the frozen ground,
It bides its time ’til spring.

I have seen you
A green, velvet virgin, somehow new again
Small breasted and innocent you lift your skirts for joy
I lust for you in your ripeness
And ravish you into blooming
Drowned, brown and flowering
Swelled pregnant and round you grow
You go shameless to the altar
Swollen with seeds
A careless whore giving warmth away
Spring will never die a maid