Harbingers
Every year they come:
tender white heads peeping from green swaddling.
Vulnerable necks.
They tell us it’s true:
months of winter waiting is worth it.
Buds and blossom and bloody dandelions will follow,
with blooming certainty.
We’ve made it through the darkest.
Head cocked in the dawn –
listening to creatures waking, rustling and buzzing,
bursting to live and breed and die,
possibly on the wires of my new fly zapper, but most likely not.
Life surges relentless as the urge
to capture my heart’s leap at these signs
and to yell again it’s nearly spring
and we’re still not dead.
