Daffodils, tulips, bluebells; dozy bees and cheery thrushes; the drone of a lawnmower, the scent of the new grass; the bluest sky, the sun on your face . . . spring has arrived!

For me, spring is the most energising season. There’s renewed vigour, more power in a daydream, the sense that warm months, laden with potential, stretch ahead. The clouds are innocent and fluffy, not ominous and weighty (in fact, I heard on the news that last week for an entire day there was not a single cloud in the sky over the UK; a true marvel!).

What better time for romance?

This recent balmy warmth has called to mind an ee cummings poem:

there are so many tictoc
clocks everywhere telling people
what toctic time it is for
tictic instance five toc minutes toc
past six tic

Spring is not regulated and does
not get out of order nor do
its hands a little jerking move
over numbers slowly

we do not
wind it up it has no weights
springs wheels inside of
its slender self no indeed dear
nothing of the kind.

(So,when kiss Spring comes
we’ll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss
lips because tic clocks toc don’t make
a toctic difference
to kisskiss you and to 
kiss me)

For me, cummings encapsulates what’s so magical about this first glimpse of spring – there is a timelessness, a slowing of the fast pace of life, a quietening of the ticking clock. Spring is joyous, powerful, colourful, cheering. And the result is renewed passion: a lingering kiss in a flowery garden; a meeting of the lips where the world slips away and all that remains is love and passion and nature. On a warm spring day, as cummings says, ‘Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.’