Welcome back to the daily poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network.

I'm David Kern.

Today is March 1st, which means that it is the 99th anniversary of the birth of Richard Wilbur,

one of the most important poets in American history.

He was born March 1st, 1921, and he died on October 14, 2017.

In 1987, he was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress,

and he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice in 1957, and again in 1989.

He also wrote a poem, which is perfect for this time of year. It's called March.

So today being March first, I figured I'll read a poem called March, and I'll read it on Richard Wilbur's birthday.

So here is Richard Wilbur's March.

Beach leaves, which might have clung parching for six weeks more,

were stripped by last night's gale,

which made so black a roar and drove the snow streaks level.

So we see in the glare of a sun whose white combustion cannot warm the air.

From the edge of the woods in gusts, the leaves are scuttled forth onto a pasture drifted

like tundras of the north, to migrate there in dry, skitter or fluttered brawl, then flock

into some hollow like this below the wall, with veins swept back

like feathers to our prophetic sight, and bodies of gold shadow pecking at sparks of light.

One of the things I love about this poem is the way Wilbur creates transitions from one image to the next,

the way he sequences the images together. He does it in ways that seems so simple by offering

images or statements that end up actually being questions or putting questions into the mind of the listeners,

or the readers. So we start with an image of these beach leaves,

...