Sunday, February 26, 2017

Februapril

Sunlight streams through winter-smudged windows
Cold blue sky and puffy clouds
Over yards of white snow, coarse like sugar
It could be any February day

Then a fly
Catches my eye
Clinging to the window screen
Circling hesitantly, one tentative footfall after another
Peering in at me from outside

Curious, I ease open the front door
And as February air gusts in
I instinctively hunch my shoulders against impending cold
But instead, warm spring washes over me

Almost simultaneously, I'm racing through my house;
Frantically pumping bicycle tires;
Searching for helmets and sunglasses buried under so many toques and scarves;
As if at any moment a blizzard could crash through
And take it all away

And then I'm soaring
Bathing in the moist, warm, scented day
Pedaling faster and faster
As if not to miss a single square foot of spring

Whizzing over a bridge
I hear the rush of meltwater crashing through a riverbed
Tree branches heavy with buds rustle over the stream
Murmuring polite hellos to one another after months of silence

I speed past a farm field
That blinks green where snow is rapidly slinking away
I breathe deeply
And smell the damp, sweet, earthen scents of life

Where ice still stubbornly coats trails
I ease off my summer ride
And step gingerly through April-deep mud
My footfalls stirring the slumber of insects
Who spiral lazily upward, then down again

I reach my arms wide
Tilt my face to the sun

It's eerie, though welcome
And it won't stay
But awoken from my own torpor of winter dormancy
Today I will fly a little too

...

Temperatures fall
Muddy footsteps immortalize, frozen in time
Snowflakes swirl from steel gray skies
The ground dusted once more in white

And I wait...

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