A Poem for a Thursday #133

Lilacs are one of my very favorite spring flowers. When we moved last month my lilac bushes were just starting to bloom and I was sad to miss them. Alice Persons wrote today’s lovely poem about the joy of lilacs. Persons is an American poet who lives in Maine. She started writing poetry in the early 1980s but then stopped while she was in law school. Her first volume of poetry was published in 2003. She also cofounded Moon Pie Press in 2003 and has run it on her own since 2006. It has published more than 40 volumes of poetry from a wide variety of poets.

A guaranteed miracle,
it happens for two weeks each May,
this bounty of riches
where McMansion, trailer,
the humblest driveway
burst with color -- pale lavender,
purple, darker plum--
and glorious scent. 
This morning a battered station wagon
drew up on my street
and a very fat woman got out
and started tearing branches
from my neighbor's tall old lilac--
grabbing, snapping stems, heaving
armloads of purple sprays
into her beater.
A tangle of kids' arms and legs
writhed in the car.
I almost opened the screen door
to say something,
but couldn't begrudge her theft,
or the impulse
to steal such beauty.
Just this once,
there is enough for everyone.

Stealing Lilacs
Alice N. Persons