The National Audubon Society Field Guide to New England

A poem about kids, and nature, and marshmallows

a gray tree frog looking handsome

A week ago today snow was falling heavily. It was so close to being rain that simply scooping it with a shovel turned it to slush. It hung heavily on the trees, breaking some limbs and bending others low. But today the yard is clear of snow, has been for days. The first daffodil has blossomed in our yard, perhaps an inspiration to the increasingly gold goldfinches on the feeder outside the window. The bright blue spring anemones have opened at the base of the dogwood tree. I’m starting to think about the gardens again, what should be divided, thinned, removed. What holes need filling with new plants. It’s still possible we could see more snow before the end of the month, but we’ve reached the tipping point. More than three weeks after the official start, it has begun to feel like spring here.

When our kids were younger we spent a lot of time outdoors with them in spring, watching our own gardens come back to life as well as the plants and trees in the surrounding meadows and woods. And the frogs! We had so many at the house we lived in then. Evenings brought a cacophony of calls,  loud enough to make us close the windows to have a conversation some nights. The kids were full of curiosity about everything. That’s when I became devoted to field guides. All that knowledge held between two covers, sandwiched between a table of contents and an index, full of color photos, and no need for WiFi or even electricity.

Today’s poem was one of my February Poetry Adventure poems. It is very much as it was when I first wrote it, not having had time to go back and do much editing yet. As we fly through National Poetry Month at top speed, I am not responding to as many poetry prompts as I had hoped, but I am no less delighted by them. A good prompts makes you stretch your creativity in different directions, it sparks connections you might not have made otherwise. It is, as I have remarked before, an invitation to inspiration. This poem was written in response to the word, “Marshmallow.”

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The National Audubon Society Field Guide to New England

My steadfast companion,
my font of knowledge,
my well of answers to the most
frequently posed question
of childhood’s early years:
Mama, what’s that?
I don’t remember
where it came from,
but I know it sat
on our shelf before children,
latent, barely thumbed,
guarding its potential for magic.
Then with but the turn
of a page it transformed
a dragonfly into
a Slender Spreadwing,
an Ebony Jewelwing,
a Variable Dancer.
A frog with a piercing trill
became a gray treefrog,
and then our friend,
along with his cousins
the spring peepers, pickerels
and wood frogs.
The wildflowers suddenly
had names and personalities
Ragged Robin and Chicory braved
the roadsides, bold and tenacious.
Dutchman’s Breeches dangled
daintily in the undergrowth,
while Dusty Miller and Daisy Fleabane
gossiped in the meadow.
But Marsh Mallow was perhaps
the greatest discovery of all.
How differently they looked
at her white to pink blossoms
once they learned of the lineage
that linked her to s’mores.

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I am continuing to share the daily prompts from NaPoWriMo.net each morning. You can find them in Notes or visit this post and click on the day’s date to be taken to the Note where you can post your poem attempts in the comments. You can join in at any time, no pressure, just poetry. And in lieu of more reading recommendations, I would direct you to the poetry you can find in the comments in the Notes since April 1. We have such a smart, talented, generous poetry community here.

Happy Reading and Writing! And Happy Spring!