Spring Song And A Later

Two poems in conversation, separated by the distance that time imposes on all living things. "Spring Song" bursts with the irrepressible joy of renewal - worlds waking into green and birdsong, the kind of rapture that only the first warm day can bring. "A Later" carries something quieter and more hard-won: the settle of seasons, the wisdom that comes after the blooming, the tender recognition that fullness has its own beauty. Riley wrote in the plainspoken music of ordinary American voices, his Hoosier dialect lending warmth and accessibility to feelings that might otherwise feel too large for language. These are poems that feel like returning to a place you thought you'd lost, or meeting someone again after years apart. They work not through cleverness but through direct emotional truth - that particular American gift of making the monumental feel homespun.