MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Spring cannot come soon enough for poet Amy Gerstler. She spent the winter waiting for the first day of spring, which officially starts tomorrow.
AMY GERSTLER: I anticipate spring from the moment fall starts happening.
KELLY: Gerstler has won a Guggenheim fellowship. Her 14th book of poetry comes out next month. One of the poems is about this change of season. NPR's Neda Ulaby has more.
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: Here's Gerstler reading the poem called "Anticipating Spring."
GERSTLER: (Reading) Anticipating spring. Mosses, pollens and grasses tune up. Can you listen without needing to speak? That fox wants to tell you something. Drunk on crumbs of the dead, roots sing. Blossoms ache to flash their panties, a la can-can girls. Scholars mumble. Pages crumble. Wild parrots scream between rainstorms. Slow-growing saplings groan. Don't pray aloud, just wish from inside your hideout of silence. Ah, goddess, please touch me.
ULABY: This spring is a bittersweet one for Amy Gerstler. Her home in Los Angeles was not damaged by the California wildfires, but her best friend's home in Altadena was burnt away to nothing.
GERSTLER: So she's going out to the site and nurturing the things that are starting to grow on her blank, ashy lot now.
ULABY: Even in Southern California, where early spring is subtle, she says she and her friend find hope in signs of new life.
GERSTLER: Stuff is growing. Green things are starting to come up through the layer of ash.
ULABY: The ash will dissipate, the world moves forward, and there's pleasure right now, she says, in knowing the longing for spring will soon be satisfied. Amy Gerstler's new book is called "Is This My Final Form?" Neda Ulaby, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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