Every Day Can Be Spring

When I was in my twenties in the 1960s, I wrote a sort of ho-hum poem about spring. Its message was essentially that of the Peggy Lee song popular then: "Is That All There Is?" When I showed my poem to a friend in her seventies, Mrs. M. said, "You're much too young to feel that way." I didn't think so. I thought I was smart and sophisticated and worthy of cultivation by poetry editors. But none of them ever accepted my bored-with-spring poem, and now, in my late forties at the beginning of the 1990s, I can't remember a word of that poem. It's gone with the drinking that helped me feel smart and sophisticated and the center of a universe of only one.