I can no longer wait for spring When I know the perfume of countless pale orange blossoms Will fill the air When heaven will hold white billowing clouds Over the trees and pastures now full of wildflowers Purple and yellow and red they grow Petals all tossed in the cool wind The lakeweed will gather at the shore Where the reeds sprout tall and thick Dragonflies circle the green water Viceroy butterfly like a leaf Now the cranes are joyous Warming their wings in the sun Walking in the shallows Searching for mosquitoes on the surface The Bluebird calls from the treeline The Cardinal calls from the air Deer roam through the rows of sugar cane Quiet in the breeze Orange groves full of angry cottonmouths Who coil in the sun Soft flowing river Mangrove snapper slips through the water Warm in the noon time sun Today we bury you Underneath the ground Everything you've seen and been All that you became Is lost in an instant During a final winter rain Now we give you up To become part of the earth Bringing only joy Leaving only love We cannot stand here in sorrow When the orange blossom starts to bud