Signs belie the still-bare branches
arching the hardwood forest with an airy weave.
Can you hear the hickory clear his throat?
Inside the shaggy bark, cells repair.
And pipes revive. Buds swell the tips of twigs.
High on a rough trunk, resurrection ferns go green.
Maples blush tawny red.
Spring seeps inside the trees.
My calendar shows a winter scene
with numbers tucked in ordered rows
but birds know better.
Did you catch the morning chatter?
Out of darkness, cardinals sing
and wrens respond with small bird bluster.
Can you hear the new tenor?
Spring is in the daybreak song.
The dirt below us lives –
can you feel the tremor?
A scattering of small flowers push white
through the brown litter blanket.
Here, the bloodroot. Here, hepatica.
There, the hairy bittercress.
Golden ragwort bud purple by a fungus-crusted log.
Spring comes first to humble lives.
It creeps in cold.
It calls you from your long torpor.
Will you kneel down by tiny flowers?
Will you tread lightly the altar of earth?
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| Hepatica, by Don Hunter |
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| Bloodroot, by Don Hunter |
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| Golden ragwort |
Beautiful!
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