📜 Best Poem

You are forest royalty here each year with enduring loyalty Be you a Queen, Or be you a King, you have returned to welcome Spring! Your throne is found in the Green Mountain State Where, Vermonters for sweetness Anxiously await Elegant and benevolent, you hold the liquid gold to be lavishly bestowed upon subjects of fur-feather-paw or with caps of plaid One drop will make the taste buds glad Autumnal crowns of amber-rust-brown, you return to glory when spring comes round You stand proud among ancestors, descendants Your flowing elixir is shining, resplendent "Let them eat pancakes!" you say in the most jovial way and waffles-fudge-chili-creemees-tea-scones or the simple pleasure of sugar on snow Drizzle-sizzle-dip-frost-baste-braise & glaze Your syrup is used in an abundance of ways The Majesty of our woods, So regal and grand Steam rises from festivities all over the land Boiling of the sap is a magnificent event This is surely what they meant when they said Heaven Sent Oh, dear Maple tree Be you a Queen or Be you a King, We commemorate and celebrate your sweet taste of Spring!

sweet Spring dripping the long descending trail to my pancake

I wonder if you've known a time When, though you tried, you could not rhyme, Your pen, as silent as a mime, Your thoughts, a motor sans a prime. If ever this on you befalls: Your pen on paper simply stalls, Then listen to my knowing calls, sweet tastes of Spring break through those walls. A bit of maple in a spoon Begins to make my rhyme cells swoon, And then, as with familiar tune, My smiling heart leaps o'er the moon. My brain fills up, my eyes aglow, The rhymes burst out my old chapeau. Like Spring's sweet sap from roots below, New rhymes drip fast, until they flow. When maple goodness you consume, You must take breaks, then resume, For, when those rhymes begin to bloom, Your head has only so much room. Take it slowly, enjoy each bite, And let the rhymes come as they might. With any luck you might just light Upon a rhyme for "orange" tonight.

Nestled in a crook on the tree-thick mountainside, rough hewn wood shivers beneath its sugar-snow quilt, heart dormant, dreaming of the crackling amber pulse of seasoned logs, the sweet rush of early spring through winter-hard veins, the sticky breath of distillate rehydrating frost-chapped pores- and, as night's black softens into pre-dawn mud, the taste of liquid gold lingers, thick and warm, upon gray lips.

Everyday the sun melts into colors and fades into darkness. But every morning-sun shatters that darkness. Every fall we watch cold grab hold of the earth as leaves fall until the forest is so barren it appears mother nature herself has sunk into a coma. But every spring she awakens to greet us with more flowers than we could possibly count. Now cancer has sprouted. So, my beloved must have her own autumn-drop her leaves, dim her life's light, and hunker down in the cold darkness clinging to the faith gifted to her with every sunrise. Faith that her spring will come, and you'll find her dancing with flowers in her hair.

Consider the source. Snow-bound roots heavy with starch. The song of thaw and sweetness rising. Consider the ancestral line, the way the trees and our animal mouths learned language, learned offering, so that we might sugarcoat our communion. Consider quiet, consider attention, consider the first of our curious hands to lift a bead of sap from the bark. Consider survival, always an act of symbiosis. Sustenance, a history of the world.

Sun peeks out, such a welcome sight. Winter's been long, all those cold nights. Sap starts to climb, from the roots to the crown. Luckily, we tapped a few trees outside of town. The buckets fill up: drip, drop, drip. Time to collect the sap, it's quite a trip. 'Round the sugarbush, we tromp through the snow, Pouring sap into buckets as we go. To the sugarhouse, the sap is hauled. "Fire door!" My daddy called. Fire in the arch, sweet in the pan, We'll make as much syrup as we possibly can. The sweet taste of spring has arrived at last, Just as it has for many years past.

Then 350 trees tapped, 85 gallons made, 3 rolls of stickers used To label the grade. 1 dog in the sugar house and 2 little kids, messing with the sample jars and dirtying the lids. 600 gallons, enough to boil, if we don't start soon, 600 spoil. Now 4 thousand trees tapped, 35 barrels made, many more sample jars of differing grades. No dogs in the sugar house, she has to wait outside. It's not as much fun without her by my side. 6 thousand gallons of sap in the tank. The forest of trees, is who we can thank. •Wherever we go the stories we'll bring, each one a reminder of the sweet taste of spring.