Harbingers

Harbingers

The woods are slowly succumbing
to spring, but not without
the struggle that prefaces
the longed-for season
throughout Nature's stern reign.

The tenacity of unobliging winter
unamenable to the calendar;
- we fret and fear
that Nature will somehow
carelessly misplace the season.

In the woods that peplexity
between and betwixt
wide areas springing free
of winter's icy miseries
yet adjacent snow remains
complacent and heedless

of great flocks of geese
thrusting themselves upon kinder skies
northward again, relinquishing southern realms.
The trails we traverse require
care lest we slither
long implacable glaciers.

But there! We saw it, the Mourning Cloak
flittering ghostlike through the stands
of green fir, bare beech
initiating spring ritual of
mate-seeking; the rite undertaken
presumptively by brash squirrels.

And there! Flutters the lone
fragility of an orange skipper
forlorn and lonely
awaiting the leafing of trees
the fleshing of its denizens.

c. 2009 Rita Rosenfeld