Plath’s Spring and Other Poems

By Madeleine Ringer

Plath’s Spring

the birds are chirping this eve
the sky is light and the trees lean in
to whisper "spring has sprung"

I know it is true
the ash on my tongue
has dissolved into dew

my nose runs bloody 
but i smile through,
luck is in my pocket, 
with a four leafed clover, a blossom, and you.

the drought

at least once a week i am dried up
a pool in a drought
i cannot find a reason but still i search
i pace these four walls and hold my breath by habit
but i do not flat i lay against a concrete bed
the blue sky is beautiful but i fear it feels my sadness
and O’ the cold, i know, feels my madness.
i pace i sit i feel nothing, i feel it all;
soon enough the water will rise again,
with no sense brought with it,
and i will swim and bathe
- but for now i wait

there is contentment in the frost

the sun, she feels our nostalgia, 
and shines for us still, while
the earth begins its increasing ritual
of freezing over, a glistening touch to the 
fields and rooftops,
and as we hold our breath, the world seems to
release hers, and hopes we do the same
slowly, we do.

labyrinth

my mind is buried in a labyrinth;
i scattered my ashes in corners
of the hedge overgrowth

buried deep down below
with the worms and the roots
i have placed the map to my soul

you need not a compass - 
it is where the fig tree grows.

i am spinning in the middle of it all;
gravity bows at my feet 
and i rise like i fall,

all at once, over my head,
then down again
like nothing at all. 

the stars are winking at me
and i am squinting to see
their smug smiles,
omniscient and naïve. 

adrift

i fear my essence has drifted from me
separated by forks in the stream
i watch her float past the lily pads
and their visiting dragonflies
she seems unaware
absorbed by the current
i reach for her
but empty ripples meet my hand,
so i stay
carried by the waters eb and flow,
and hope i feel her through the waves
in any way i can

UK-based 21-year-old writer, Madeleine Ringer, shares her love of the Romantic period and poets like Sappho, through her writings of nature, love and all things melodramatic. When she isn’t scrawling away in her journal or feverishly typing in her notes app, she can be found sketching, reading or adoring her cat.