It's just Spring

4"x6" linocut on Somerset paper with vine black Graphic Chemical ink

The quiet of the naked trees release

The spores of pity. Chevrons, white and red,

From blackbirds flash. Mechanicals are still.

Ascending from a silent fairy land

Life groans, gripped by winter that has overstayed

Its times. The ceanothus pushes out

Against a past where Arthur and Sir Gawain

Are holding still beneath the meadow oaks—

Burnt alarums shutter thought, and time

Is needed to release the anger, pain

While redbuds, dogwoods struggle for the sun.

Wait, oppressive, suffocates the hope

That struggles trapped beneath a shattered land.

This print and poem are for an artists' book on war and peace
being put together by the Central Coast Printmakers.