Early Spring

I am constitutionally predisposed to cool weather. I love autumn and winter, but more to the point, I am comfortable in them. I dislike summer quite intensely, as heat and I are not simpatico. I have, however, a complicated relationship with spring. I do not like early spring time. There is mud, and snow mold, and always the scattered detritus of humanity, which is somehow everywhere now that the snow is gone, even though there was no sign of it before winter came. After winter's chill and enchanted glory, I find it all quite demoralising. But once that bleak period between the white beauty, and wild flower time is past, and we have spring properly - all bright, green grass and gentle sun.... well, in that small margin of time, before the summer heat comes and the words is still soft and cool and alive, then I love spring almost as much as autumn.

We were supposed to write a beginning, or an ending poem today. Or, if you were really ambitious, you could write a beginning-and-an-end poem. I drew a blank most of the day, mostly on account of a poem I have been working on intermittently for months, which is a beginning sort of poem, but still has that one transitional line that will not come out the way I want, and is therefore holding up the rest of it. I ended up setting for a poem about this time of year:

 The In Between Time

Winter is passing

   And burning away

Snow lingers only

   Where shadows lay.

In the bright morning

   I mourn for the loss

Of needle ice

   And white hoarfrost.

But the smell of Spring

   And Blackbirds’ call;

The tiny greeness,

   Impossibly small

The willows budding

   And snow-melt rills

Soothe my winter-heart:

   There is beauty still.