‘Spring Fling’ was given to the people of Toronto to celebrate the radical wisdom of spring and National Poetry Month, 2008. Deborah was out and about Toronto, giving this poem, printed on a bookmark to libraries, book stores and people passing by.
angles, limbs,
bare branches
and rock path
yield to soft
green eruption
Bare brown grey
winter edges,
essentials
yield once more
to tender green
frivolity
Like a lace slip
with layers
of frothing edges
below a plain
grey gabardine suit
But this wickedly
wonderful world
prefers to wear
her slip on
the outside
Spring fling
reorders
life
Such extravagance
Such eruption of colour
Purple, pink, and white hyacinths
standing in choir rows
with golden daffodils
and ruddy red tulips
But it is the green
lime green
sage green
hunter green
red green
bark green
grass green
that green
that greens
my grey brown
winter heart
And I am made young again
as spring cracks open
the dry brown grey earth
The brown grey branches bud
lace and frills of green
And for a short time
the world dances
in a green lace
slip
that
she wears outrageously
on the outside
inciting spring’s radical
reorder
of inside out
© Deborah Prokipchuk Ackley 2008
