Catalpas

Long ago, probably in an anthology, I read the opening lines of W.D. Snodgrass's poem April Inventory:

The green catalpa tree has turned
All white; the cherry blooms once more.

I had not then seen a catalpa, for I grew up outside their range. I was considerably older when we moved to this neighborhood, where catalpas grow here and there.

The Audobon Society's field guide to eastern trees says that catalpas bloom in late spring. In Washington, this seems to mean late May. The cherries here bloom about six weeks before that. I suspect that Snodgrass wrote for the meter and not for the calendar.

But Snodgrass was correct to suggest the striking look of a catalpa in bloom. Here is a southern catalpa a block away, in pictures from different years:

Snodgrass included April Inventory in  Heart's Needle,  a collection that won him the Pulitzer Prize. It appears that one can still find those poems in Not for Specialists, the title of which consists of the last three words of April Inventory.