March 5, 2022
The grip of cold is past,
But not its gifts:
The trees are sticks,
The yard, still bare.
Tufts of withered grass,
Papery leaves, wind scattered,
Whitewashed reeds,
Seed pods: velvet husks, lone dried bean,
Its time to sprout long past.
The garden, gone.
Beyond the fence, brown brush.
Fallen branch.
Amidst a mound of dirt
Crowned with a sewage lid,
A tiny creeping weed,
Tendrils outstretched in search of sun,
Reclaims the ground.
The only shining thing in all the land:
Its blossoms, pinky sized,
Blue, bright
Yellow heart,
purple veins.
A sign
Of spring.
And what’s the point of that?
Only this: what looks dead
May yet bring forth new life.
Ah yes, you knew that:
Spring is resurrection.
You saw that coming.
But did you also see:
What looks dead
Surface bare,
Nothing green for weeks,
Today, the only shining thing,
Three weeks from now,
This hill will spill over with
Constellations of buttercups and daffodils.
New life
Unfolding imperceptibly,
Then suddenly, all at once.
Written at Corhaven, Virginia. Not totally sure this piece is finished, but I wanted to publish it as a companion to this piece, and to get them both out there before the seasonal moment passes and all we can think about is how swampy July is.
[…] formed faster than I could write. Sometimes that happens. I think of this as a companion poem to the one I wrote (or started writing: it may not be finished) at the previous Coracle retreat. Tracking seasonal […]