This week’s poem, Ben Boegehold’s “Fool’s Spring,” recalls a shiny boyhood stone – not true gold, but beloved – and meditates on the long Maine wait for true spring. I love this poem’s imagery of light and greens and golds, and its tender appreciation for the beauties and promise within the wait.

Boegehold is a poet and teacher living on Mount Desert Island. His work has been published in this column, the Cincinnati Review and the Stonecoast Review, as well as in several anthologies. He also has work forthcoming in the Cider Press Review. When he’s not writing, he’s usually doing some crazy project on his house, walking in the woods with his toddler daughter or sea kayaking on the coast.

Fool’s Spring
By Ben Boegehold

when we were kids my brother
had a piece of pyrite he treasured it

he kept it in the cubby near his bed
we knew it wasn’t gold but still

we’d bring it out and marvel
at the way it glittered in the light

the way the sun reflected
off each tiny facet

ancient people used to strike
their blades against it sparking

fires in which they offered up
lambs and oxen to the gods

today the sun glints off the ice
that flecks the little stream nearby

my wife and I take down
our box of seeds and sort them

once again like prospectors
we dream of greens and golds

of a summer garden even
as the temperature drops

and the sap retreats while last year’s
leaves swirl in the wind

yet still we go on counting
the days until last frost

striking steel against this fool’s
spring to see what sparks ignite

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Fool’s Spring,” copyright 2023 by Ben Boegehold, appears by permission of the author.

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