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. 

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