The cream-white, soda-flush of hawthorn bloom
Extends in streaks and still-shot eruptions
To bring the hedgerows more than definition.
Punctuation, regular as breath,
In gasps, in pants, in drinking draughts of sky,
Until the rows we watch from the window
Of the chuckle-wheeled carriages, are made
New-coloured, like the newly-weds’ hallway,
Redecorated with a paint that seemed
Unexciting on the shelf, but cover
A whole wall and gloss it over green
And spring green, the new and living colour
Of an awakening land, and you will see
How white is more than simply white again.
Some of those hedges hold their purple clouds
Where lilacs pour their thick, re-shaping shock
Into the composition of our eyes
And unframed, unstructured pictures, unhung
And unlikely to be collected.
But this is Spring – this vision from the train –
This helpless rush at life and flowered trees
And never while you ride ignore the may.