Today’s post will be a little bit earlier than usual, as there is another special post coming up later today.  And yet again, I’m draw to poetry about seasons for today’s post.

“Changes” was a picture book poetry collection that a very dear friend of mine sent to me as a gift last year shortly before our trip together to Highlights (which was a lifelong dream of her’s).  She had found it and fallen in love with it and wanted to share it with me as inspiration before our trip.  And it was.

I can’t talk about this book without thinking of “H is for Haiku” (which I talked about in a previous Simply 7 interview last summer).  BOTH books were published posthumously by the children of the writers.  In “H is for Haiku,” Amy Losak was able to publish Sydell Rosenberg’s (her mom) haiku in a delightful picture book that explores every letter of the alphabet in a unique haiku.  While I’m not certain of the genesis of “Changes,” Crescent Dragonwagon introduces the book posthumously for her mother’s (Charlotte Zolotow) work.  Both books are excellent reads that make me mourn the loss of such great talent (and also realize that sometimes talented people work hard as editors or poetic inspiration to help others publish, without ever being published themselves).

Regardless, “Changes” is a collection of seasonal poems that have an almost haiku-like quality to them.  Each little reflection on life and nature has that subtleness that a haiku can perfectly capture, and yet they’re not haiku.  The one I picked to share spoke to me most today about one of my favorite things of spring.