Early March
But it will soon be spring.
I can feel it in the way my body moves,
creaking just a little less,
as I unwrap the extra layers
which kept me warm the past three months
but now are stifling.
There are still the remnants of high-piled banks of snow,
small, mostly somewhat dirty patches trying to resist,
but they, too, will soon be gone.
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It is only days now
before the most impatient of the tulips poke their tiny heads
through the tenderly obliging earth of Early March,
like little groundhogs testing out the time of year,
and Manuel next week will check for them
in every bed and border and will spray them all
before the deer have even noticed
that there are once again such things as tulips in the world.
I go about, counting up the winter losses,
a few of last October’s newly planted Iris rhizomes
dislodged and with their twisted bits of brittle roots
no longer in the ground,
two coreopsis, perhaps not planted deep enough last fall,
now awkwardly upmerged
as though they were survivors of a wreck at sea
clinging just above the surface of the water
to a piece of timber,
and everywhere are branches torn from aching trees,
ripped from woody shrubs with little mercy shown.
But these dear friends, while they will each be mourned,
are not the only ones that I have lost.
Since November, when the world closed in,
I have lost at least a little of my faith,
some portion of my trust in how men manage their affairs,
much of the confidence I foisted on myself
that America, at least deep down,
still had a beating heart and honest soul.
This much anticipated, sorely needed spring
feels different, even as it feels the same
as Early March has always felt to me.
I walk the long accustomed lane which meets the nearest road
and neighbors look at me,
and I at them,
with sorry new suspicion and distrust,
which it is harder by the day for any to deny.
Even the smallest birds can feel the change.
Even the ready-to-awaken earth beneath my feet
trembles though it does not quite know why.
