Spring into Easter

Spring

Vernal Equinox Diurnal Journal

On every island in the CNMI spring has sprung

All year long through all four seasons it is strung

We only have two seasons, one rainy and one dry

Our location near the Equator is the reason why

Tall grass, weeds, and wildflowers have their fling

All year-round flowers bloom diurnal and nocturnal

To fences, poles, and houses vines and flowers cling

Seeds spread by winds and birds each a fertile kernel

Orchids prosper and bloom outside in coconut shells

Bougainvillea blooms cover neighborhood fences

Gardenia flowers emit their powerful scented smells

Hundreds of wildflowers amaze one’s visual senses

Our Mariana islands remain perpetually vernal

Our beauty writes its own eternally green journal.

Easter

Funny Easter Bunnies Lay Eggs Not Runny

This sonnet is for the time when ladies wore colorful hats

called Easter bonnets to their church on Easter Sunday.

Straw baskets were filled with decorated colored hard boiled

eggs, chocolate eggs, jellybeans, and chocolate rabbits:

Chocolate rabbits are covered with multicolored foil

What are those oval pastel things under their legs?

They are the results of pots of water brought to a boil

Colored and pastel decorated hard boiled chicken eggs.

Since when do rabbits lay eggs that are not runny?

Does a mother hen give birth to a little baby bunny?

Of course eggs are classic symbols of birth and life

Hard boiled they are eaten without a fork or knife

No chocolate or hard candy for you in Lent you fasted

As each little boy and girl in dreamy slumber sleeps

the Easter egg hunt is over now a filled Easter basket

with jellybeans, eggs, and yellow marshmallow peeps

peel foil for chocolate, peel egg shells make egg salad

sing about Easter bunnies and bonnets in an old ballad.

Joey aka “Pepe Batbon” Connolly is a retired educator who taught in the CNMI, NOLA, and LVNV. He is the Poet Laureate of Tinian and enjoys stargazing.