Spring of Home

My oldest love, my first, my last,

this greenlit glowing Spring of home,

the season of each fleeter love,

of lovesweet lips and sweeter lies,

endures, outlasts these human ties,

Redbird, redbud, and sunred sky,

and planes of leaf in dogwood tree,

like curtaindrop, behind the mind,

have been my landscape in a land

unknown to eye, unfelt by hand.

This Spring has ringed around my heart

by curve of brook, by curl of cloud,

by lap and sigh of restless air,

entangling petals, faces, hours,

like storm across a field of flowers.

This love, this Spring, this world of peace,

returns like tides or birds or stars,

endures the death of any part;

and holds me strongly like the sod,

or love for man, or love for God.