Springtime At Last

Oh, those special signs of spring!!! How I love them; let me count the ways. A friend of mine once told me that I get so much joy from nature that it must truly be part of my spirituality. I agree. Nothing is more wonderful to me than a walk in the woods or a stroll around our farm, listening to the noises of nature or watching a bird build its nest which a Robin did last spring right outside my bathroom window, where I could watch him create it, twig by twig, stick by stick and branch by branch. What an incredible process to witness. An aside to this; I just saw a cartoon in the New Yorker where the mother bird is saying to Papa Bird as he is placing another piece of straw on the nest, "No, not there; put it over here." Hmmmm, even female birds may have that sense of design and decorating. Oh course, we know they don't; but wait, do we really know that??? Anyway, spring has once again come to the meadow outside my kitchen window and it does put an extra energetic step into my life. In celebration, I would like to share a poem I wrote another year at this same time called, SPRING AT LAST

SPRING AT LAST

Four long winter months have passed
Fourteen frigid weeks
One hundred twenty days
And now,
Out my kitchen window
Too long absent from my eye
Spring has come at last
Showing its face
And taking its spring-time place
In my backyard

No longer need I linger
lazily on my couch
Wrapped in blankets
to silence the chill
Thinking of this season to come
And anticipating its spring-time thrill

Soon I will go outside and lie down
on the tufts of soft green grass
beneath the oaks and sycamores
And see their buds appearing
And look upon a bring blue sky

And beyond my sights
In far distant fields
Where there are still patches
of winter snow
Just now, beginning to go
Spring-time is coming to the meadow too

Wrens and robins begin to sing
Their new season song
And call along
To other waking creatures of the fields
And from tree to tree
I see
A robin, a dove, a chickadee
Alight in the warm brignt sun
Male chasing female
Displaying bright bulging breasts
Enticing the females to their nests
To begin a family
In this heightened season of the senses
A time not to be alone

The rabbits too, shake their tails
And hale a new day dawning
Another season in which to romp
And stomp their rabbit feet

And now, I myself will go
Wherever nature leads my senses
Whirling winds
Animal movements
Woods running wild
Sunsets setting
Wherever cosmic energy leads me

And before it is over
I will wish that I could paint
And put upon a canvas
The colors and the forms
The emotions and the joys
That this season brings

For when melancholy moments
Come again in December
I will want to remember
All that this season has awakened in me
And the memory will serve me well.