Images

 SPRING and ALL by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

 By the road to the contagious hospital under the surge of the blue

 mottled clouds driven from the northeast.....a cold wind.

 Beyond the waste of  broad, muddy fields  brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

 patches of standing water the scattering of tall trees...

 All along the road the reddish purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy stiff of bushes and small trees

 with dead, brown leaves under them leafless vines......

 Lifeless in appearance, sluggish dazed SPRING approaches....

 They enter the new world naked, cold, uncertain of all save that they enter. All about them the cold, familiar wind.....

 Now the grass, tomorrow the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf....

 One by one objects are defined, it quickens: clarity, outline of leaf....

 But now the stark dignity of entrance.....still, the profound change has come upon them;

 Rooted they grip down and begin to awaken......

William Carlos Williams ( 1883-1963) was  a Puerto Rican American doctor, who was one of the leading poets of Imagism. His mother was a painter and he, in turn, painted not only literally but with words.  He suffered strokes in the latter part of his life, and was racked with depression because of his ill health.  But his poetry lives on.......