It’s mid-April and I should be obsessed
with rapidly vanishing snow, slow green
appearing everywhere amid wet brown,
the preen of chickadees and the likely
arrival of goldfinches at feeders.
                                                           Here,
where there’s often no Spring to mention,
no noticeable warming of soil, only mud
and more mud and more; here, where
the morning air is only an unmet promise
of primrose and peony,
                                          I should just be
thankful, I guess; glad to be alive among
successive fields that will bear green corn
a month or two from now, that will show
no sign that winter ever was.
                                                    I suppose
it’s really quite enough as it is, obsessing
as I do about fledgling crows, the possibility
of corn, and living a quiet life on the edge
of green, where everything’s only just
                                                                almost.

©

Ron. Lavalette is a very widely published writer living on the Canadian border in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, land of the fur-bearing lake trout and the bilingual stop sign. His first chapbook, Fallen Away (Finishing Line Press) is now available at all standard outlets. His poetry and short prose has appeared extensively in journals, reviews, and anthologies ranging alphabetically from Able Muse and the Anthology of New England Poets to the World Haiku Review. A reasonable sample of his published work can be viewed at EGGS OVER TOKYO: http://eggsovertokyo.blogspot.com