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February 19 - March 4

In this stirring episode, Alexis and Kit return to the garden just as it is re-awakening with early flowers, and eagerly expect the spring thaw. In Hiro’s Corner, a look at the peach blossom and the spring festival it inspired.

Listen and subscribe on Apple and Spotify.

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Poems Featured in this Podcast

In Earliest Spring by William Dean Howells

Tossing mane of snows in wildest eddies and tangles,
Lion-like March cometh in, hoarse, with tempestuous breath,
Through all the moaning chimneys, and 'thwart all the hollows and angles
Round the shuddering house, threatening of winter and death.

But in my heart I feel the life of the wood and the meadow
Thrilling the pulses that own kindred with fibres that lift
Bud and blade to the sunward, within the inscrutable shadow,
Deep in the oak's chill core, under the gathering drift.

Nay, to earth's life in mine some prescience, or dream, or desire
(How shall I name it aright?) comes for a moment and goes-
Rapture of life ineffable, perfect-as if in the brier,
Leafless there by my door, trembled a sense of the rose.

***

March Hares, by Andrew Young 

I made myself as a tree,
No withered leaf twirling on me;
No, not a bird that stirred the boughs,
As looking out from wizard brows
I watched those lithe and lovely forms
That raised the leaves in storms.
I watched them leap and run,
Their bodies hollowed in the sun
To thin transparency,
That I could clearly see
The shallow colour of their blood
Joyous in love’s full flood.
I was content enough,
Watching that serious game of love,
That happy hunting in the wood
Where the pursuer was the more pursued,
To stand in breathless hush
With no more life myself than tree or bush.

***

The snow on my hut
Melted Away
In a clumsy manner

– Issa

***

The sun has set
And the spring water
Increased in volume? 
–Kito

***

Ice and water
Their differences resolved
Are friends again
– Teishitsu

***

March is the Month of Expectation by Emily Dickinson

March is the Month of Expectation.
The things we do not know—
The Persons of prognostication
Are coming now—
We try to show becoming firmness—
But pompous Joy
Betrays us, as his first Betrothal
Betrays a Boy.

***

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (excerpt)

As she came near the second of these alcoves she stopped skipping. There had once been a flowerbed in it, and she thought she saw something sticking out of the black earth—some sharp little pale green points. She remembered what Ben Weatherstaff had said and she knelt down to look at them.

“Yes, they are tiny growing things and they might be crocuses or snowdrops or daffodils,” she whispered.

She bent very close to them and sniffed the fresh scent of the damp earth. She liked it very much.

“Perhaps there are some other ones coming up in other places,” she said. “I will go all over the garden and look.”

She did not skip, but walked. She went slowly and kept her eyes on the ground. She looked in the old border beds and among the grass, and after she had gone round, trying to miss nothing, she had found ever so many more sharp, pale green points, and she had become quite excited again.

“It isn’t a quite dead garden,” she cried out softly to herself. “Even if the roses are dead, there are other things alive.”

***
High Waving Heather by Emily Bronte

High waving heather, 'neath stormy blasts bending,
Midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars;
Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending,
Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending,
Man's spirit away from its drear dongeon sending,
Bursting the fetters and breaking the bars.
All down the mountain sides, wild forest lending
One mighty voice to the life-giving wind;
Rivers their banks in the jubilee rending,
Fast through the valleys a reckless course wending,
Wider and deeper their waters extending,
Leaving a desolate desert behind.
Shining and lowering and swelling and dying,
Changing for ever from midnight to noon;
Roaring like thunder, like soft music sighing,
Shadows on shadows advancing and flying,
Lightning-bright flashes the deep gloom defying,
Coming as swiftly and fading as soon.

***

This spring morning in bed I'm lying,
Not to awake till the birds are crying.
After one night of wind and showers,
How many are the fallen flowers?
— Meng Haoran

***

The plum tree bent under the winter freeze,
With showers, all at once opens its buds
The moon, through mists, projects its shadow;
In the dark, breezes carry its scent
A few days back, the trunk was buried in snow;
Now, branches bear flowers anew,
Through hardship and the bitter cold—
This dignity, at the forefront of spring.

– Hounsai

***

Witch hazel (excerpt) by Elizabeth Akers Allen

What wizard, wise in spells of drugs and gums,
With weird divining-rod
Conjures this luminous loveliness that comes
As if by magic from the frozen sod?

Fearless witch-hazel! braver than the oak
That dares not bloom till spring,
Thus to defy the frost's benumbing stroke
With challenge of November blossoming!

And yet it has an airy, delicate grace
Denied all other flowers,
And lights the gloom as some beloved face
Dawns on the dark of melancholy hours.

Miraculous shrub, that thus in frost and blight
Smilest all undismayed,
And scatterest from thy wands of golden light
A sudden sunshine in the chilly glade.

***

Crocuses by Hannah Flagg Gould

Down in my solitude under the snow,
Where nothing cheering can reach me;
Here, without light to see how to grow,
I’ll trust to nature to teach me.

I will not despair–nor be idle, nor frown,
Locked in so gloomy a dwelling;
My leaves shall run up, and my roots shall run down,
While the bud in my bosom is swelling.

Soon as the frost will get out of my bed,
From this cold dungeon to free me,
I will peer up with my little bright head,
And all will be joyful to see me.

Then from my heart will young petals diverge,
As rays of the sun from their focus;
I from the darkness of earth shall emerge,
A happy and beautiful Crocus!

Many, perhaps, from so simple a flower,
This little lesson may borrow,
Patient today, through its gloomiest hour,
We come out the brighter tomorrow.

***

The geese go north --
today they see rice fields
full of water 
– Issa

***

Returning geese,
have you completely
given up on me? 
– Issa

***

March Poem (excerpt) by William Cullen Bryant

The stormy March is come at last,
With wind, and cloud, and changing skies,
I hear the rushi