Willard Leroy Metcalf


Ode to March
By: Paul Gordon Mathews


Now is the new year come, not on that day
cold weeks gone by - when life was wrapped in snow
but now - in March - I know it by the way
the pasture brook runs wild - the way that rows
of winter blackened maples show the sweat
of spring on greening limbs.  Stand still and feel
the air's crisp edges folding back - to let
the softness through!  This is the only real
beginning, winter's calendar is torn
The moment when to earth a year is born!