Three Days into Spring

Early spring is that very busiest time of year for me. Some of you have been wondering where the rest of our story went. Well, it's still in progress. I will post a chapter soon. In the meantime, here is a short poem I wrote for my daughters a few weeks ago when the Michigan spring first showed up and the 12-inch ground cover of snow finally started to melt. We had made a snowman in mid-February and it stood for several weeks. Then one morning, three days into spring and temps in the fifties, we were backing out the driveway on our way to school, and my daughters noticed that it was nothing but a clump (about the size of a bird-bath stand without the basin) in the center of the lawn with the two arm branches lying beside it.

It is good to see spring come, but I like snow and always have a twinge of sadness when it gives way to the drab earth tones that precede the full-blown colors of spring and the imminent sense of summer.

Three Days Into Spring
Three days into spring.
No robin yet as harbinger to sing
or search among the matted weeds
where the last vestige of snow recedes
toward the shady cold.
The snowman that we rolled
and laughing lofted to its height
is gone but for one sad and small stalagmite,
standing sentinel in the sun
between two branches now undone,
the fallen arms of make-shift mirth
at rest again... upon the waking earth.

© Copyright March, 2005 , TK, Patterns of Ink
(The next day even the clump was gone, and a few days after that, there were seven robins foraging together near the very spot where it stood.)