The Oak Grove in April

by Pepper Trail
 
Beginning spring, too early for the songbirds
but the oaks are humming, inhaling the sun
through the warming earth, up their coiling
passageways to the vibrating buds, green
swelling with the sound and the soil itself
is bursting, the sandy brown gopher mounds
patterning the ground, pushing aside the new
grasses that vibrate in the breeze like strings
of guitars, as the dusky skippers dart, black-furred
against cold mornings, now warmed by the afternoon
sun working the petals of the lilies too fast to follow
as they dash, leaving the yellow drumheads
of the buttercups to the heavy-footed flies
and all this silence is so full of sound
I just don’t know what will be left for the birds
when they finally get around to getting here, to say.