The Year Outgrows The Spring

The Year Outgrows The Spring

The Year Outgrows the Spring

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The year outgrows the spring it thought so sweet
And clasps the summer with a new delight,
Yet wearied, leaves her languors and her heat
When cool-browed autumn dawns upon his sight.

The tree outgrows the bud’s suggestive grace
And feels new pride in blossoms fully blown.
But even this to deeper joy gives place
When bending boughs ‘neath blushing burdens groan.

Life’s rarest moments are derived from change.
The heart outgrows old happiness, old grief,
And suns itself in feelings new and strange.
The most enduring pleasure is but brief.

Our tastes, our needs, are never twice the same.
Nothing contents us long, however dear.
The spirit in us, like the grosser frame,
Outgrows the garments which it wore last year.

Change is the watchword of Progression. When
We tire of well-worn ways, we seek for new.
This restless craving in the souls of men
Spurs them to climb, and seek the mountain view.

So let who will erect an altar shrine
To meek-browed Constancy, and sing her praise.
Unto enlivening Change I shall build mine,
Who lends new zest, and interest to my days.

Withered Leaves by Peter Burn

Withered Leaves by Peter Burn

Withered Leaves

by Peter Burn

I watch the leaves as they fade and fall
And form a heap by my garden wall.

I think of my loss in days “to be,”
My garden’s wealth but a leafless tree.

I loved those leaves in their day of birth:
I love them now in the lap of earth.

Withered leaves! They are beautiful yet,
Though nipt by the frost, and dash’d by the wet!

Mine eyes feast not on the world of green,
Death holds its revels where life has been.

Snow, sleet, and hail, and a sunless sky!
These, these are mine, till the by and by.

I wait the hour. My heart has rest;
Seasons are faithful to His behest.

Through leaden sky, and through leafless tree,
I see the summer that is to be.

The Circling Year by Ramona Graham

The Circling Year by Ramona Graham

The Circling Year

by Ramona Graham
SPRING

The joys of living wreathe my face,
My heart keeps time to freshet’s race;
Of balmy airs I drink my fill—
Why, there’s a yellow daffodil!
Along the stream a soft green tinge
Gives hint of feathery willow fringe;
Methinks I heard a Robin’s “Cheer”—
I’m glad Spring’s here!

SUMMER
An afternoon of buzzing flies.
Heat waves that sear, and quivering rise;
The long white road, the plodding team,
The deep, cool grass in which to dream;
The distant cawing of the crows,
Tall, waving grain, long orchard rows;
The peaceful cattle in the stream—
Midsummer’s dream!

AUTUMN
A cold, gray day, a lowering sky,
A lonesome pigeon wheeling by;
The soft, blue smoke that hangs and fades,
The shivering crane that flaps and wades;
Dead leaves that, whispering, quit their tree,
The peace the river sings to me;
The chill aloofness of the Fall—
I love it all!

WINTER
A sheet of ice, the ring of steel,
The crunch of snow beneath the heel;
Loud, jingling bells, the straw-lined sleigh,
A restless pair that prance and neigh;
The early coming of the night,
Red glowing logs, a shaded light;
The firelit realm of books is mine—
Oh, Winter’s fine!

In Time’s Swing by Lucy Larcom

In Time’s Swing by Lucy Larcom

In Time’s Swing

by Lucy Larcom

Father Time, your footsteps go
Lightly as the falling snow.
In your swing I’m sitting, see!
Push me softly; one, two; three,
Twelve times only. Like a sheet,
Spread the snow beneath my feet.
Singing merrily, let me swing
Out of winter into spring.

Swing me out, and swing me in!
Trees are bare, but birds begin
Twittering to the peeping leaves,
On the bough beneath the eaves.
Wait,—one lilac bud I saw.
Icy hillsides feel the thaw.
April chased off March to-day;
Now I catch a glimpse of May.

Oh, the smell of sprouting grass!
In a blur the violets pass.
Whispering from the wildwood come
Mayflower’s breath and insect’s hum.
Roses carpeting the ground;
Thrushes, orioles, warbling sound:—
Swing me low, and swing me high,
To the warm clouds of July.

Slower now, for at my side
White pond lilies open wide.
Underneath the pine’s tall spire
Cardinal blossoms burn like fire.
They are gone; the golden-rod
Flashes from the dark green sod.
Crickets in the grass I hear;
Asters light the fading year.

Slower still! October weaves
Rainbows of the forest leaves.
Gentians fringed, like eyes of blue,
Glimmer out of sleety dew.
Meadow green I sadly miss:
Winds through withered sedges hiss.
Oh, ‘t is snowing, swing me fast,
While December shivers past!

Frosty-bearded Father Time,
Stop your footfall on the rime!
Hard you push, your hand is rough;
You have swung me long enough.
“Nay, no stopping,” say you? Well,
Some of your best stories tell,
While you swing me—gently, do!—
From the Old Year to the New.

The Mirage Machine by Lord Bechard

The Mirage Machine by Lord Bechard

The Mirage Machine
by Rev Lord CM Bechard

I. The Spark Beneath the Skull

In the temple of bone where the neurons hum,
Where the pulse of eternity softly drums,
There stirs a storm, unseen but bright—
A prism birthed from the absence of light.

A whisper crawls through synaptic seas:
“Suffer not from the world, but from your dreams.”
And lo! the fabric of reason tears,
Spilling colors that never were there.

The mind begins its mirrored climb,
Through the fractal folds of thought and time,
Where nightmare, memory, myth, and muse
Collide like gods with no excuse.

II. The Kingdom of What-If

The dream unfurls—electric vines,
A thousand worlds in tangled lines,
Each one born of an anxious spark,
A rumor blooming in the dark.

There—castles built from phantom fears,
Their bricks are made of unseen tears,
Where kings of doubt wear crowns of smoke,
And laughter burns where silence spoke.

The rivers flow with thoughts untrue,
Reflecting skies of borrowed blue,
And every tree bears fruit of dread,
That feeds the ghosts inside your head.

O kingdom vast! O mirror made!
By our own hand, by our own blade,
We forge the iron of despair,
And breathe illusions into air.

III. The Dream Architect

Upon the horizon—a figure stands,
Blueprints drawn in trembling hands,
A weaver of what-might-have-been,
The maker of pain that’s never seen.

He murmurs in pulses, soft, divine:
“I am your fear. You are my spine.
I borrow flesh from your belief,
I am the shadow of your grief.”

He bends the cosmos with his art,
Each thought a universe torn apart,
And from imagination’s womb,
He builds the walls that become our tomb.

IV. The Shattering

Then lightning struck the mental veil,
And truth rode through on a solar gale—
A comet voice of clarity spoke:
“The cage you fear is your own smoke.”

Galaxies cracked, the dream was torn,
The mirage collapsed where it was born.
The endless suffering, all so grand,
Melted to sand in my open hand.

The serpent of panic hissed and fell,
Dissolved beneath a golden bell,
And silence—pure, unbound, complete—
Kissed the dust beneath my feet.

V. The Awakening Beyond Thought

I rose through the rippling, radiant field,
Where the wounds of imagination healed,
Where every monster’s face revealed
The frightened child it tried to conceal.

Each doubt became a blooming sun,
Each fear—a truth already won,
And the void, no longer black and vast,
Sang: “The future’s fiction, not forecast.”

Through starlit corridors of mind,
I left my old self far behind,
The dreamer woke within the dream,
And drank from time’s kaleidoscope stream.

VI. The Return to Flesh

Back in the skull-cave—breathing, still,
The heart resumed its subtle will,
And all the chaos, all the flame,
Were fragments dancing in my name.

Reality sat, serene and mild,
Like a mother watching her restless child.
And I laughed, I wept, I finally knew—
The worst I feared was never true.

For imagination is both sword and key,
The chain, the fire, the alchemy—
It wounds, it heals, it blinds, it frees,
It’s hell, it’s art, it’s divinity.

VII. The Final Flame

Now, when darkness claims my sight,
I paint the void in liquid light.
No longer slave to phantom pain,
I dance with madness in the rain.

For Seneca’s voice still hums in me:
“Suffer not from reality,
But from the mind’s own masquerade—
A phantom war the heart has made.”

So I breathe in peace, exhale the lie,
And wink at the stars in the knowing sky,
For imagination’s not my chain—
It’s just the mirror of my brain.

And when it breaks, I clearly see:
The dream was never over me.

Listen to The Episode

Listen to the Mirage Machine on the Poetic Flows podcast