"LILACS": Ever-Returning Spring

Every returning spring, a little song I sing.

A child plucks a purple bloom from the heart of a day in June.

Ever-returning spring, it's just a little song I sing.

A little girl in blonde hair and blue

with ribbons the color of lilac,

            but cheeks are rosy too.

Bare-feet and baubles -

A little boy in brown trousers and shoes

With hair the color of the sun,

            and eyes of lilac blues.

Plucks the moment from the hour,

the butterfly from the flower.

Ever-returning spring, it's just a little song I sing.

A child of God, I do return.

Ever was and will be,

barefoot and bareheaded.

Out from the patches of strawberries and blueberries,

From those plucked and eaten -

Out from the sunny beach days,

And the bayberries left to ripen....

Out from my mother's hand, held so surely, so unquestionably.

Time trusted and forgotten.

From the tree-lined streets- the Elms as big as Eden.

Up from the walks to haunts of happiness long lost in reveries,

of Moments of the Heart, left by lapping bays

on sandy shores during noontime blazes

of sunwashed days of picnics eaten by little boys.

Of mother's dreams resting quietly

in eternity's scenes.

Unknown to death, to birth, to schemes.

Ask yourself why?  "Why the memory?"

"Out from the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking

A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,

Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,"¹

            -The waves of pain, the waves of joy-

Ever moving down that road, it is I

the Generations - behind me, beside me, before me.

I reach to pluck the LILACS of countless Junes

[that in Dooryards (countless ones) so lastly bloomed]

Ever-Returning spring-

A sadness that never quite passes, I turn the page

to find the joy the other side can bring.

Every returning spring, it's just a little song I sing.

I find myself every returning spring:

                "In the dooryard fronting an old farmhouse near the white-wash'd palings,

Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with

heart-shaped leaves of rich green,

With many a pointed blossom rising delicate,

with the perfume strong I love,

with every leaf a miracle....."²

I reach to pluck the lilacs of countless Junes

Ever-Returning Spring, a little song I sing -

I am the Generations unfolding.....

                             "I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,

Taking all hints to use them,

but swiftly leaping beyond them...."

Every returning spring, a little song I sing.....

                                                               "Once Paumanok,

when the lilac-scent was in the air and the Fifth-month

grass was growing,

Ever-Returning spring,

A reminiscence I sing."³

Michael  Guy

May 7, 1989.