A New Day. Poem by Michael Walker

('Make it new'. Ezra Pound) .

When my fig tree is sprouting green leaves
and the lone camellia has budding pink flowers
and the trees are in blossom on the grass verges
of the sidewalks where I go for a run:

When strangers on the run greet me like friends
and someone assists me at the pump of a petrol station;
When I see rowers practicing in boats of fours and eights
on the Whanganui river near the old railway bridge downstream,

Which has been converted to a car-pedestrian one
and cars and people on foot are flowing across it
in the brighter late afternoon light of October,
I know that spring is announcing itself.

-22,23 October,2019.