Always the First Spring

I think the flowers
can feel the cold
And have been sleeping
Curled up cosily in bulbs
under blankets of soil
and now that mornings have returned
are opening, stretching their petals
trumpeting their yawns
across the garden,
through the woods.

And I yawn and stretch too.
I think of how it feels
to see the world
for the first time
as I open my eyes,
I stretch my legs
poke my toes out from
the warm quilt and
I wonder if I might be
quite like a flower too.

None of us have
seen this spring before:
this slanted ray of light
on that part of the fence;
the rain has never dropped
precisely like this before;
the clouds start a new race.
In spring we are all new.
It is the first spring, this spring,
this particular spring, for all of us.