passage

Spring does not exactly "spring" up. Kind of drags in ...

I wrote this poem during the early spring of 2020, before the COVID shutdown, and submitted it to Anatolios Magazine, which accepted it for publication in May 2021.

Each spring, I often sat at my dining room table, watching a pair of Canada geese. This pair returned to my Southern Tier home every spring to nest on the island in the small pond behind my house. They almost always hatched at least three goslings. The day I saw them come back, they made their way across rotten ice. We’d had a few very warm days that worked away at the ice’s integrity. Still enough strength for two geese, though.

I’ve always been obsessed by the seemingly slow progression of warm weather after winter and the startling arrival of green in the woods. This poem is in that vein:

passage

we have passed

through winter’s underlit tunnel

to the other side where geese

walk over stale ice to resurrect a nest

where birds’ chorales shake dawn air

the driveway is mud again

fall’s brown fields uncovered

beneath bluest sky

our disbelief shows

but like ivy leaves turning

toward the south window

we cannot help ourselves

we rejoice

the dance in our minds apparent

as we throw off down jackets too soon

the glitter of sun

on every branch and twig

outlines the sleeping chaos that waits only

for a few more degrees of sun’s slant

and warmer light to burst

into green song

(You can listen to it here)