I Hear Spring

By Carole Nichols

My daffodils are blooming bold,
In the ground still touched cold.
Frost and freezing gasping last;
I hear the Spring a'coming fast.

As Winter's fingers melt away;
The gentle green comes out to play.
And I laugh as the sun touches warm;
Again she's beat the frigid storm.


I love the Springtime, when everything is fresh and new. I can't wait for the last of the cold to be gone, and for the air to be scented with the fragrance of nature at it's best. And I found this:

A Spring View

Tu Fu (c. 750)


Though a country be sundered, hills and rivers endure;
And spring comes green again to trees and grasses
Where petals have been shed like tears
And lonely birds have sung their grief.
...After the war-fires of three months,
One message from home is worth a ton of gold.
...I stroke my white hair. It has grown too thin
To hold the hairpins any more.
trans. Witter Bynner


Wow, so powerful!

The Cliff Dwellers

BY CAROLE NICHOLS


They stand as silent sentinels;
Holes in the cliff watching the world.
Ghostly silence and filtered dust,
A mystery round the desert curled.


Home to a race long gone into night,
Swept away on the winds;
The lone eagle circles, pitious cries,
Where have you gone, my friends?


The doors stare out at sun-baked earth,
Watching the world of a people, history gone
Stories locked in long abandoned dust,
Only ghosts walk there, all alone.


If you stand there in the setting sun,
The doors in the stone seem to come alive;
Shadows move and the wind sighs a song
That the eagle echos with each lonely dive.


All that's left are holes in the cliff
And the coyote howls as it calls to a race,
Vanished to nowhere and leaving no clues,
Disappeared from this earth without a trace.

The Fighting Judge

BY CAROLE NICHOLS


You seemed like such a big man,
Seen from the eyes of a child.
You spoke of the rights of free men;
I saw you drive the crowds wild.
My dad said you were a fighting judge;
And that you were fighting for me.
Fighting for some high ideals,
And to help our state stay free.
I didn't understand it all then,
But I could tell you spoke from the heart.
And I was more than a little awed
That you were so fierce and smart.
Our state made you our leader,
And I grew up knowing your name.
I was raised in a place of history,
You brought Alabama to national fame.
You stood up against a nation, George,
Until that nation made you fall.
But you are standing on your feet again,
You have heard the bugle's final call.

Country Stars

BY CAROLE NICHOLS

The stars of the country night,
Glitter like tears in candlelight;
Set deep in purple, endless ink,
Tug hearts and minds to the very brink,
To ponder the reason the sky should cry,
To make the soul yearn to fly,
To count them till you fall asleep,
Or make wishes of longings deep.

Their shine brighter in the crisp air,
No civilized light with which to share;
Ticking imaginations along the way,
Often lingering into a new made day,
And once in a while a tear will fall,
Arcing a streak to gravity's call,
The silent burn of it's last run,
Signals farewell, for it's life is done.

Firefighters

BY CAROLE NICHOLS


A firefighter is human, just like you and me;
But so often the world just doesn't see
How driven he is by an inner ideal
That life is sacred, and death too real.
He doesn't want medals pinned to his chest;
He just wants to do his very best.
He know that Today might be the day
That he can help in some small way.
He laughs, he dreams, he wants, he needs;
He can't count the times his soul bleeds.
He has his demons and his fears;
He struggles sometimes to hide his tears.
Yet at the alarm, he puts self away,
And walks into hell, come what may.
He doesn't falter, doesn't hesitate;
To do so, he knows, just might tempt Fate.
He puts his life on the line for a stranger,
And he loves this job so filled with danger.
As he fights, an angel hovers and sings;
He can feel the caress of angel wings.
A firefighter's heart, I've been told,
Is made of God's most precious gold.

Heart of the South

BY CAROLE NICHOLS

It's something that's born in the blood;
You have to be raised here to feel it.
This poignant swell in the strongest heart,
No time or law or government can kill it.

A southerner lives with the past all the time,
From the Virginia fields to Georgia's hills.
Bitter battle scars still score our land;
We still hear the guns when the air stills.

The blood of our men has made our soil rich;
Their souls linger ghostly in whispering pines.
The wind carries that rousing rebel yell
That still sends thrills down southern spines.

At Shiloh, you can still smell the blood
Of the men who heard that final bugle call;
And the heart of our land cries for the bodies
Of the ones who ventured above the Line to fall.

Every child of the South knows Dixie's proud words;
They sing it with joy and know that it's true.
We'd wither away without the magnolia's sweet scent,
And the Stars and Bars that still flies in the blue.

There's no place, no town, no river, no wood,
That doesn't remind us of what has long past;
Each sight and sound brings back a way of life
That the powers that be said just couldn't last.

The rebel in us will still stand for our beliefs,
We'll continue to honor the Confederate grave;
The south hasn't risen, for it never fell....
It's still the home of the best of the brave.