Spring comes to America

Tom Boswell says it like this: The sun rose, blazing above a bank of clouds over the Atlantic, at 7 a.m. as though the earliest rays of morning wanted to report exactly on time for the first full-squad day of spring training.

I said it like this, years ago:

Almost imperceptibly the days
Have lengthened and the sky has grown more blue.
Unclipped forsythia tangles in a blaze
Of gold; bright jonquils shine, and crocus too,
Amidst the paler shades of blooming trees:
The pinks and whites of apple, cherry, pear,
And darker redbud in the pastel seas
Of tossing blossomed limbs so lately bare.
Grass reborn spreads its imperial jade
In carpets envied by a monarch's throne,
And birds from dawn to dusk sing out their hearts.
And in each town some space is found or made
For that sure sign that winter's truly flown:
With that first pitch, at last the summer starts.