Here's a health unto the green leaf of the tree

There will be no maypoles tomorrow, I think, or bonfires, or apple trees: I will be helping a friend move, which is its own sort of ceremonial time-mark (and an excuse to hang out together: I can make the case it's an act of community). But there's a full moon tonight, and I will undoubtedly be awake early enough to gather some very confused winter flowers with the dew still on them, and I know what season of the year it is.

The elementary school where I went from first to sixth grade did not raise me to be a pagan, but we had what I've realized in retrospect might as well have been quarter-year festivals: the harvest celebration right before Thanksgiving break, the solstice assembly before everyone went home for Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's, et cetera, and carols for May Day; I suspect if there had been a summer term, we would have had midsummer festivities, too. They grained the seasons into me very early. For years, this was my default pattern for the holidays. I do not remember if I was ever one of the children who wove ribbons around the maypole, although at some point I must have been; but I had the maying song by heart and was surprised, years later, to hear a version of its lyrics turn up in Loreena McKennitt's "The Mummer's Dance."

We've been wandering all of the night and the best part of the day
And now returning back again, we bring you a branch of May
A branch of May we bring to you and at your door we stand
It's nothing but a sprout, but it's well budded out by the work of nature's hand

Lyrically and musically, Waterson : Carthy's "May Day Song" is the closest I've ever found. Thanks to nineweaving for it. The rest of you, enjoy.

. . . No
Praise that the spring time is all
Gabriel and radiant shrubbery as the morning grows joyful
Out of the woebegone pyre
And the multitude's sultry tear turns cool on the weeping wall,
My arising prodigal
Sun the father his quiver full of the infants of pure fire,
But blessed be hail and upheaval
That uncalm still it is sure alone to stand and sing
Alone in the husk of man's home
And the mother and toppling house of the holy spring
If only for a last time.
—Dylan Thomas, "Holy Spring"