Nature, Teasing

Nature is an irrepressible mischief,
delighting in teasing and often
tormenting us. Today the tease
presents. Only yesterday we
waxed rhapsodic, bathed in warm
sunshine, caressed by sweet breezes
ambulating in pleasure through our
leisurely woodland ramble. Today
all has been mysteriously reversed.

We cannot linger, move briskly on,
while the chill damp of this day sends
its icy fingers into our very marrow.
The cloud-capped sky, a watery gray
as though we view it through the lens
of rarely-ambulatory aquatic creatures.

Though we hasten to outstrip the
sharp, probing wind, we still note small
treasures; lichens brilliant in the dim
light, toadstool shelf-fungi clasped
tightly against tree bark, water-striders
flailing mightily in their return to
the ravine's creek-tributaries.

American bittersweet vines are
awakening, black cherry trees lustily
leafing and dogwood bushes tentatively
testing the atmosphere. Our very small
companions, though enraptured by
newly-released fragrances, are yet
eager to move along, cold penetrating
their defences, as it does ours.

Nuthatches' prolonged calls penetrate
the woods, then the calls of crows,
settling and rising, flapping through
the landscape, and the staccato of
neighbourly woodpeckers. A cardinal's
sweet lilting whistle encircles our
environment so swiftly adapting from
rigid frigidity of winter newly-escaped,
to this hailed, uncertain spring.