If Peeps are in the store, can Spring be far behind?
My hand, reverent, traces the crackle of cellophane
That shelters conjoined confections.
Soft shapes in bright colors—
Yellow, pink, and this year, blue—
(Yellow is the best, anyone could tell you.)
Colors of spring more true than the purple crocus
Frozen in its bulb under the snowbank at the end of the drive.

My hand plucks them like seed packets.
One, two, three four five.
Odd numbers are best—no one notices
If you eat the odd one before you get home.

The register beeps the red total.
The clerk says leave them out overnight
In the open, without cellophane;
That's the best way, she smiles.
I smile back; who am I to tell her she's wrong?
Naked Peeps are soon as hard and dry as sun-baked dirt
At the end of August.

My five small packs nestle in the sack
Like boxes of tulips minus the stems.
My thumb punches through the cellophane of the one on top—
Better than any groundhog's shadow,
More pure than the first robin's song,
A promise of pollen shakes loose with sugar spilled on my lap.
I pull the yellow blossoms apart,
And eat Spring.


© by Judy Fort Brenneman.
Used here with the author's permission.