A Poem For A Tuesday

Winter, Spring
Jim Harrison

Winter is black and beige down here
from drought. Suddenly in March
there's a good rain and in a couple
of weeks we are enveloped in green.
Green everywhere in the mesquites, oaks,
cottonwoods, the bowers of thick
willow bushes the warblers love
for reasons of food or the branches,
the tiny aphids they eat with relish.

Each year it is a surprise
that the world can turn green again.
It is the grandest surprise in life,
the birds coming back from the south to my open
arms, which they fly past, aiming at the feeders.

I've made it through most of winter without that usual craving for warmer weather, but today, with gloomy grey skies and the threat of an incoming Nor'easter, I'm ready to be "enveloped in green." I love how the narrator describes the spring transition as the "grandest surprise in life." Its funny how even after 38 years of experiencing seasonal transitions, they still feel shocking and unexpected. From the depths of winter it seems impossible to imagine the sun warming your skin or the cool relief of jumping into the lake or the bullfrog's call lulling you to sleep or the golden afternoon light slanting through the greenest shade of green leaves on the oak tree. Then from the summer haze,  I suppose it's difficult to imagine snowflakes and cold that hurts the inside of your nostrils. Alas, so it goes. And has for years. And will for years to come. Maybe one of these days I'll figure it out.