Jessica Hudgins: “Spring”
SPRING
after Millay
Green halo of new growth surrounds
the trees, while shoots, italic seeds,
lisp through the soil, pronounce
themselves: tomatoes, peppers, beets.
Eager, at first, and indistinct
as babies’ teeth, as pawns, they’re queened,
now, crowned. Their roots are in D-1.
They’ve got their thumb-grubs in the loam;
they’ve got their little tight handhold
on their little square plot. She comes
babbling, with flowers. Throwing crumbs
for birds and bees, old fool’s-gold,
idiot April plunges her wet hands,
her bright grin—into these bare sands.
Jessica Hudgins lives in Baltimore, where she teaches creative writing. Her poetry appears in The Journal, Portland Review, Glassworks, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins.