Spring Swings

I will miss spring in a high school.

I am in my portable at lunch, trying to keep ahead of the marking, looking out the window at the abandoned swing set from the elementary school that use to occupy the site.  It is a spring day that makes me want to leave this musty classroom and run full speed backwards to my days at university and playing baseball when I should have been studying for finals.

They appear like forsythia, the first flowers of spring.

The boy arrives at the swing first.  He sits down and curls his legs underneath him, shortening them so that just the tips of his toes are dragging on the ground.  She arrives shortly after and sits on the swing beside him.  I should return to my marking, shouldn't be watching from my desk in the corner of the room but the essays are not as compelling as this.  They begin to talk, each facing forward.  The wind blows her hair in front of her face and she pushes it back into place. His swing begins to spin, as his toes touch down and move it in a spiral moment.  It is very gentle.  She does the same and as they twirl, their feet begin to touch.

The swings slow down and the two slowly come to a stop, facing each other.  I pick up my pen, glance at the papers.  I have miles to go.  The swings move slightly in the breeze with their feet, toeing and brushing towards each other.  They talk and glance and move slowly in the breeze.  She touches her hair again and he looks away and then towards her again.

Finally they both stop.  Their knees are touching, they are laughing in that spring sunshine.  The swings move slightly, as they toe the ground, swinging towards each other.  The school bell sounds and they walk hand in hand back to school.

They make me think of Robert Frost's poem:

Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Youth in spring have, over the years, lifted me toward heaven.  They've become a daily reminder of my own youth, they've demanded that I remain with them.  I could have done worse than be a swinger of birches.