Spring Songs

Slowly the soil packed hard with ice
is released from its wintry sleep.
Moisture oozes steadily downward,
running into the ravine's creeks and
rivulets. Tiny, greening plants emerge.
Conifer seedlings, needle-bright with
future, erupt from the muck to seek
the life-affirming warmth of the sun.

Spring's tender ministrations to
tentative thrusts, encouraging all
of nature's organic life forms to thrive
to maturity has arisen again. A gentle
breeze rustles last year's stubborn
paper-thin leafage, and leaves small
kisses on all that it breathes upon.

The very air is fragrantly redolent of
life aroused from frigid slumber. Bees
exit their hives from within the trunks
of old trees. Mourning Cloaks, Comas
and Question Marks flit among the woods
and the meadows we ramble daily.

Robins and cardinals, chickadees and
flycatchers' songs caress the atmosphere.
Above the tree tops returned hawks
circle and glide, coasting the wind,
crying their annual nesting presence.

From an ancient tree trunk the paced
thrum of woodpeckers de-bugging bark,
their lunatic calls reverberating as they
call, then raise themselves taking to the air
colours of scarlet, black and white shifting
and weaving through the atmosphere.