"April Prayer." Sure.

April 8, 2006, the file says if you scroll down and click on "properties." The Big Sioux River had flooded, not royally but enough to splash into gulleys here and there. An emerald carpet, just barely visible, was beginning to emerge. See it?

It's spring--that's what the shot suggests, and we wanted a spring scene for a handsome space above the buffet so I picked one from this series. When we unwrapped the canvas print, my wife wasn't sure. Geese in the air and bare naked trees feel like fall. No, trust me, I said, I know it's spring because I was there, a half-mile of gravel north of the Hudson blacktop, east side of the river.

It's two weeks past April 8 now. An old friend at the hardware store said people are dying to put things in the ground, the temps so devilishly warm. My father-in-law used to say that if you listened, all that bagged seed corn in the shed was wiggling because it wanted so badly to be out and in. Up the street the neighbor's planter has been hooked up and standing on the yard for a week. The engine's probably running. His is.

Spring is busting out all over. Even down here in the basement, where I'm working on a field of flowers. Even here little shoots are rising, notable as the longhorns they resemble. Spring is here.

So when I read the first few lines of the Writer's Almanac choice poem early yesterday morning, I couldn't help but rejoice: Stuart Kestenbaum's "April Prayer." Such pious beauty. Such reverence. Such glory.

Just before the green begins there is the hint of green
a blush of color, and the red buds thicken
the ends of the maple’s branches and everything
is poised before the start of a new world,
which is really the same world
just moving forward from bud
to flower to blossom to fruit
to harvest to sweet sleep, and the roots
await the next signal, every signal
every call a miracle

Gorgeous stuff, isn't it? I'm on my knees because I know that look exactly--the miracle of that first green blush, the brown worn-out winter dying. The world is mad for rebirth, and all of that luscious stuff.

But then, same sentence, "April Prayer" goes sinfully commercial: 

                  and the switchboard
is lighting up and the operators are
standing by in the pledge drive we’ve
all been listening to: Go make the call.

That spring piety is phony as a fund drive. "Go make the call," this pseudo-poet Kestenbaum says. 

"April Prayer" paints an emerald portrait that drips with nature's abundant spirituality and the sheer glory of rebirth, then flips a switch and begs blasted handouts. It's an NPR commercial. It's downright blasphemous.

Okay, I'll admit there are too many geese out back honking out-of-key choruses and sometimes mud isn't luscious. What's worse, last night we had frost. If we had pumpkins this morning they'd be sparkling, but dead. 

A day later, I've recovered my wits enough to admit, smilingly, that a giggle is good for the soul, especially a Calvinist soul. Lord, deliver me from seriousness.

And, in case you're wondering, don't ask!  I got a receipt. I gave. So there.