Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books
Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing
Posts tagged “spring”
The tenderest yellow-green glow of the elms lining the canal in front of my house. That’s my cue that spring has arrived. When the buds catch a ray of light they turn a deep golden green. It makes me think of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 98. From you have I been absent in the spring,When proud-pied April dress’d in all his trimHath put a spirit of youth in every thing,That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him.Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smellOf different flowers in odour and in hue Could make me any summer’s story tell, Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white, Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;They were but sweet, but…
Categories: A Bit of Everything
Tagged: Amsterdam, Elm, Shakespeare, spring
At last! We enjoyed the very first spring day of 2013. Sitting in the window, it made me think of that camp song so inextricably bound to our fair city: Tulips from Amsterdam. We usually sing the Dutch version ‘Tulpen uit Amsterdam’ and typically only when we’re drunk with joy or otherwise intoxicated — temperatures above 20ºC or over two hours of sunshine a day can do that to us. More than a few believe the song to be an old folk song, but it was originally written by German singer/songwriter Klaus-Günther Neumann. The English version became one of the signature songs of British comedian and singer Max Bygraves. The sun and the warmth drew me outside and strolling along the beautiful beautiful green canals…
Tagged: 2013, February fairmaid, Happy New Year, illusion, Mina Witteman, picture poem, snowdrop, spring
Mina Witteman 