Early Spring

This early spring landscape is icily
raw, wind rattling through deciduous
boughs picking and scattering last fall's
dry leaves, rustling them along the hard,
dry ground. The forest, naked
in its revealed awakening, dark
and sere and quite unlovely.

But in the evergreens, bright oases
of dawning green, a light cacophony
of birdsong. The delicate chorus of
twitterings from gathered goldfinches,
returned to mild perches. And the
drawn-out praise of a songsparrow.

The sky encrusted with the flapping
return of gulls and geese, screeching
and calling their supremacy over the
emerging atmosphere. And clouds of
iridescent-dark crows gather and fling
into the air, preparatory to nesting.

Colour arrives splendidly determined
to banish the bleak grey when cardinals
and bluejays return to claim their right
of inheritance of time and place.
Woodpeckers, large and small, red-capped
in brilliant array, clatter their presence.