Men are April when they woo,
December when they wed.
Maids are May when they are maids,
but the sky changes when they are wives.
William Shakespeare
“In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”
Alfred Tennyson
(sweetgum tree with a traveling minstral perched high above / Julie Cook / 2018)
I heard it long before I saw it.
Loud yet sweetly melodic.
I scanned the area.
Surely it was close…but as I followed the harmonious calls,
my eyes carried me out toward the backfield meadow then high atop a sweetgum tree.
And there they sat…or more aptly put, swayed gently in the afternoon breeze,
balancing ever just so at the very top of the tender tip-top branch of the sweet gum tree.
Uncertain as to whom I was exactly listening to serenading his love, I grabbed my camera
in order to zoom in to identify this lofty crooner.
And low and behold, it was my resident mockingbird…singing ever so sweetly, ever so tenderly,
ever so joyously to the young lady of his fancy who just so happened to be sitting on
a nearby branch.
Ode to a young man bird and his fancy of love…
sadly, she flew away…
The Young Man’s Song
W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
I whispered, “I am too young,”
And then, “I am old enough”;
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
“Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair,”
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.
Oh, love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away,
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.
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