Easter Monday

In 2000, I was living in London and having a rather dreadful time of it really (it got worse as it went on), but I remember the day after Easter as being really lovely, and I wrote a poemish sort of thing about it. This poem still makes me happy, so even though it is 8 years later and Easter Monday is not a holiday in this country and today is not even Monday, I think I shall post it here. (I find it funny that Starbucks figures in it, even though I hadn't an inkling at the time that I'd ever work at one.)

After the Resurrection
The gave us a holiday,
So we took it
With our umbrellas
(To keep it from raining
Which they did).
We drank cappuccinos at Starbucks
And watched the foam clouds
Scud across the top of Green Park
Until the sky was blue
And we had to go for a walk in it,
As the trees exploded
Around us
Like suspended fireworks
Sizzling seedbursts down
And bringing them up
Short of the lampposts,
And the sun showered late daffodils
Onto the grassy slope,
Which begged for someone
To run spring-fever-crazy
Through them
Or to gather them up in a ball
And toss them--
Glorious glowing life.

And, since we're talking poems here, I just have to share with you this brief piece of silly brilliance composed today by my colleague Ben (whom I sometimes call "Bentleman," from the time when he was the only guy who worked at our store and it was "ladies and Bentleman):

Haikus are easy.
But sometimes they don't make sense.
Hippopotamus.