Spring

Some letters seem superfluous, you’ll cede: but with no tulips, spring would not be spring. We’re used to think in terms of things we need. Desiring counts for more; it bids us sing. I find my mind more keenly focuses on simple schemes: the white-on-green of flocks, or under trees, those shy, but lovely, crocuses whose joy it is to greet the equinox. Who’d miss a ‘b’? But bees provide our fruit. They fertilise our shrubs, to help us thrive. ‘C’ is not useful. Yet no surly brute would brook the brine. We need both tide and hive. Some things, we find, we smoothly do without, but spring’s the thing we’d never wish to flout.