“Winter into Spring”, a poem

(My front garden a few Springs ago)

–

WINTER INTO SPRING

–

Mysterious, unfathomable, muted season,

where life and reason are suspended

upon a cold metal wire.

The wind a  razor of clipper glass

sailing through glassine air

slicing the pallid sun’s rays–

an attempt to warm a frigid earth

to a remembered fertility.

 

Solemn seasonal palette,

white, gray, black,

cut with a flash of blood-red–

Kamikaze cardinal!

like the demon wind bearing its name,

dares the thin and paling air

to brighten for a flashing moment–

A witness to recurring life.

 

Season of bountiful snow,

brings a thirst to the land

where hoar-frost leaches

moisture with a crystallized withering-

hands to crack, bark to shatter,

and all dries and curls about

in a perverse furnace of freeze.

 

One day, a pale day

a southern breeze

breaks through the bonds of Winter

brushes up, slides up

upon the ice

and a crack like a thump is felt in the gut

a slow drip-drip of water

signals the end of this harsh season,

as icicles emit a hesitant stream,

and then the ice dam down in the brook

cracks with a louder sound

and the rush to Spring

is heralded with these natural sounds.

 

A blind movement

felt deep in the soil-

a careful stirring,

barely a rumble in the gut of the Earth

as birth beneath replaces death above

pushing through the Great Womb

to a pallid sun above-

The tyranny of Winter now broken.

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2016 (this poem is included in “Pitcher of Moon”, by the author, Amazon.com, 2014