Spring is never as we remember it:
Too soon, too hot, too dry, too cold —
Forgetting that the earth wobbles,
What sort of spring do we seek?
The one we’re convinced we recall
Twenty years ago when
The smell of fresh cut grass
Daydreamed itself through the parted window
And into pre-Algebra,
Two fifteen in the afternoon;
Then, when the arrival of spring meant
One day beneath the cold flat stone
The salamanders weren’t there,
But the next, beautifully, they were.