A prayer for spring; rising mercury looms. And the brides of Good Housekeeping all sharpen their brooms. And Lara leaves her coat on a hook in my room.
Carcasses of snowbanks slither to dark parts of lawns, and the birds they sing librettos to the face of the dawn. And Lara walks home with no jacket on.
The grass it grows greener and the sky deeper blue. The chimney makes noises: raccoons in the flue. And sleeves grow shorter, the nights shorter, too.
And it’s there in the otters as they swim down the brook. It’s there in the map of the weathermen and their petulant looks. And it’s there in the dangling of Lara’s coat on my hook.
Summer’s the scaffold and fall is the rope and winter’s a eulogy read by the Pope. But spring, perhaps cruelly, is to give us our hope
that makes it easy to think, as the winds come from the west, and the skeleton trees begin budding new flesh, that Lara’s coat might hang here forever, I guess.
Words & Music by Ryan J. Tressel. Recorded 4/22/09, all instruments RJT.
