Few poets can match the image-making of Union’s Kate Barnes. Her gift with the image is on full display in this week’s poem.

April and then May

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Kate Barnes is the daughter of Maine writers Henry Beston and Elizabeth Coatsworth. She has two books of poetry in print, “Where the Deer Were” and “Kneeling Orion.” She has four grown children and lives on a farm, which raises blueberries and hay. She was Maine’s first poet laureate.

By Kate Barnes

April and then May,
violets up in the field,
the ewes with their twin lambs;

time has decided
to turn into spring again
after all.

The maples are unfolding their leaves,
chives stand green at the kitchen door,
the black flies have decided to come back;

and the work mare has her new foal
capering over bluets in the pasture,
and the hall smells of daffodils;

and everything
is divinely ordinary –
the deep ruts in the field track,

the spring overflowing,
the excited swallows,
the apple trees

budding for perhaps the hundredth time –
and the pruned boughs budding too
that must bloom just where they lie.

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