You can hear Spring coming

Returning late from the stables, a place filled with the quiet sounds of horses' chewing hay, I stopped to admire the stars, and was struck by the whisper in the woods. So I wrote this...


Winter: the lake snaps and booms,
Ice shoving the shores, pressure and cold combining.
Blue jays scream at feeders, chips of blue
With strident voices.
Chickadees, soft in demure grays, call their names.
The pines stretch their needles, fingering the wind
Like harp strings, a murmur in the air.
Cedars hold the sound of the wind within,
And hemlocks offer the deepest hush, where snow falls without sound
Into the deeply silent tracks of deer.

But then
A shift --
The skies begin to fill with song,
Robins reclaim their world,
Killdeer scud across the muddy snow
Rejoicing.
Swallows appear, writing their names on the clear air.

The sun taps winter on the shoulder
And with bad grace, begrudging, winter starts to move.
Lakes that gleam blue in summer, gray through the autumn rains
Sparkle in white all winter,
In spring, those lakes turn black.
Long crystals form, the ice no longer booms:
It chimes with the wind. It sings, piling along shores
Glittering silver needles of ice.
Ducks arrive, gleeful in open water,
their wings loud, their voices clear in the dark.
And geese -- they call for summer,
their V in the sky splits winter apart,
changes the weather.

In the night, with the wind asleep, when all the trees stand still --
Listen... you can hear spring coming:
water begins to move.
Snow melting in the woods, the creeks flooding into lakes
Rattling the chiming crystals
Rocking the ducks to sleep.

Once water starts to flow,
Creating its songs over rocks and ice,
Demanding its way
Past cheering porcupines, love struck in the trees
And the yap of young foxes,
Sap lifts through the trees, dreaming of leaves.
Smelt stir in the currents of turbulent creeks.
Bears stretch in their dens.

Once water starts to move,
Elbowing winter aside,
If you listen
You can hear spring coming.