SPRING IS
When you tune up your lawnmower for your grass and hairy legs.
When store displays of sunblock crowd out the Easter eggs.
When you pump up bike tires coiled ‘round wheels like shed skins of black snakes.
When neighbors downwind are drawn like dogs by the season’s first grilled steaks.
When others air garages and dramas the winter left confidential.
When you walk down aisles of seed packets just to absorb the potential.
When you want to bottle the tree-blossom air and slather it on your skin like lotion.
When birds croon like Frank Sinatra their amorous devotion.
When the last lazy decorator replaces Christmas lights with garden gnomes.
When you scrape frost from your car before work and turn on the AC on the way home.
When magazines wear new hairstyles, when children and sheep are shorn.
When your clock springs forward, but you don’t the next morn.
When potholes swallow fresh asphalt, when fences and roofs are mended.
And parking-lot snow heaps linger like guests unaware the party ended.