Cold Spring

By Lawrence Raab b. 1946 Lawrence Raab

The last few gray sheets of snow are gone,

winter’s scraps and leavings lowered

to a common level. A sudden jolt

of weather pushed us outside, and now

this larger world once again belongs to us.

I stand at the edge of it, beside the house,

listening to the stream we haven’t heard

since fall, and I imagine one day thinking

back to this hour and blaming myself

for my worries, my foolishness, today’s choices

having become the accomplished

facts of change, accepted

or forgotten. The woods are a mangle

of lines, yet delicate, yet precise,

when I take the time to look closely.

If I’m not happy it must be my own fault.

At the edge of the lawn my wife

bends down to uncover a flower, then another.

The first splurge of crocuses.

And for a moment the sweep and shudder

of the wind seems indistinguishable

from the steady furl of water

just beyond her.

Source: Other Children (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1987)

Biography

Poet and professor Lawrence Raab was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1946. He earned a BA from Middlebury College and an MA from Syracuse University and has taught at various institutions including American University, the University of Michigan, and Williams College, where is the Morris Professor of Rhetoric. Raab is the author of more than half a dozen collections of poetry, including What We Don’t Know About Each Other . . .

Continue reading this biography