I just checked for the first day of spring (because I just have to know), and it’s in about four weeks. Just four weeks!
Sunday’s beautiful weather pushed me for a walk–because I love to stroll–and so in the premature spring I spent a good amount of time walking my usual route before returning home as the cold night set itself up in its usual jerky fashion. My emotional state went from miserable and miserly to merry and magnanimous. My spirit was lifted!
Today’s post is a little of that spirit in words, so hopefully you can enjoy the essence of spring as I had received it, walking along the river with a smile in my heart.
“Late February” by Ted Kooser
The first warm day,
and by mid-afternoon
the snow is no more
than a washing
strewn over the yards,
the bedding rolled in knots
and leaking water,
the white shirts lying
under the evergreens.
Through the heaviest drifts
rise autumn’s fallen
bicycles, small carnivals
of paint and chrome,
the Octopus
and Tilt-A-Whirl
beginning to turn
in the sun. Now children,
stiffened by winter
and dressed, somehow,
like old men, mutter
and bend to the work
of building dams.
But such a spring is brief;
by five o’clock
the chill of sundown,
darkness, the blue TVs
flashing like storms
in the picture windows,
the yards gone gray,
the wet dogs barking
at nothing. Far off
across the cornfields
staked for streets and sewers,
the body of a farmer
missing since fall
will show up
in his garden tomorrow,
as unexpected
as a tulip.
