Poet Laura: Written in March

What I knew about love at fourteen, I learned from Shakespeare. Love, especially young love, often ended badly. The only classes I cared about in school were Speech, Debate, and Drama. My first love, the handsomest boy I had ever seen in real life, sat behind me in Algebra. His mere presence electrified and distracted me so thoroughly that I had to repeat the class. His birthday was March 15, the Ides of March, which added to his allure. I was young for my class, fifteen months younger than he. When he turned sixteen and got his driver’s license, he dumped me for a cheerleader from a neighboring school who was allowed to ride around in cars with boys. One never knows when a line long buried will rise from memory at an opportune moment. Shakespeare did not let me down.

Morning on my Deck in the New Regime

I see a chap I know, walking with two friends
on the boardwalk dividing my tall house
from beach below, and hear invoked with flourish,
the Bard of Avon’s holy name. Another fellow
proffers forth a fragment of a speech:
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men
I look then down, wave, and bellow so:
cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war,

after which three walkers in unison unleash
this citation of the fateful foul decree:
Julius Caesar, Scene 0ne, Act Three.
I treasure then this moment of delight
in bardic fellowship with passersby,
before my shroud of dread turns day to night.

—Donna Hilbert, first published in ONE ART: a Journal of Poetry

Where I live in Southern California, winters are generally mild, but spring still thrills us with bursts of light and new life. I like Dickinson’s notion that March’s shoes are purple. My favorite walking shoes are purple too.

Here is an excerpt from a March poem by Emily Dickinson:

We like March, his shoes are purple,
He is new and high;
Makes he mud for dog and peddler,
Makes he forest dry;
Knows the adder’s tongue his coming,

—Emily Dickinson, excerpted from We like March, his shoes are purple

Here are the first few lines from William Wordsworth’s “Written in March”

The cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter
The green field sleeps in the sun;
The oldest and youngest
Are at work with the Strongest;

—William Wordsworth, excerpted from Written in March

Vernal Equinox

O to see the first day
of spring is a miracle.

My friend recounts
the story of new sight
in her blind eye: renewal

on a beam of light
on this day past the night
of equal light.

O to walk un-blinkered
into the shimmer
of Daffodil and Lily,

see the silverfish dart
from its winter crevice.

—Donna Hilbert, from an earlier version in the now out of print The Green Season, 2009

Your Turn

Albert Einstein said, “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.” How do you chose to live? What is going on in your March world? I find rebirth in spring to be a miracle. And love, at any age, is a kind of miracle too. What do you think? Have you a spring miracle?

Post and post images by Donna Hilbert. Featured image by Garry Knight, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Poems used with permission.

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Donna Hilbert

Donna Hilbert’s latest book is Enormous Blue Umbrella, Moon Tide Press, 2025. Work has appeared in journals and broadcasts including Eclectica, Gyroscope, Rattle, Sheila Na Gig, ONE ART, Verse Daily, Vox Populi, Tweetspeak Poetry, The Writer’s Almanac, and anthologies including Boomer Girls, The Widows’ Handbook, The Poetry of Presence I & II, The Path to Kindness, The Wonder of Small Things, Love is For All of Us. She writes and leads workshops from her home base in Long Beach, California. (Author photo credit Nathaniel Gutman.)

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