I posted the photo above yesterday on Facebook. It was so exciting to see my first spring robin of the year. I wonder where he is today, braving the winter storm that is sending wet snow flying horizontally from the east-northeast at a furious pace. The weather reports say we may have sixteen inches of heavy new snow before this is all over. It took this storm longer to get here than the meteorologists thought it would. Snow didn't start to fall till it was nearly noon. My comments with the picture prompted two different friends to suggest that I write a poem. So, procrastinating desperately on a sermon last night, that is what I did instead.
Namaste
Over my head, a pale worn old
blue farm shirt
Soft with fog
Caught and tore
When geese honked through
Just past sunrise,
Wings’ wild beating,
joy in a V.
Our not quite pet squirrel,
Sleek from the nuts
my friend next door fed him
Through the dark and cold
days now past,
is on his perch
Beween old snow drifts
--Now gym-shoe gray--
And goose-rent sky.
He flips and spins,
Hangs upside down
On his cottonwood (with buds
On the tips of each arced
branch)
no goal in mind but to joy
in the sun’s strong rays.
In a place close by,
where snow-melt has pooled,
a crow wades.
That makes three suns.
The light in the sky greets
the light in the pond
Greets the light in the
bird’s bright eye.
Neat brown sparrows,
Pert black capped chickadees,
Chirp and tweet to claim the
tree,
And a lone robin, puffed and
still,
Puts up with them,
Thinks he was wrong
To come home so soon,
Not yet the hardy
Bird of cheer
He will be soon
When he tugs a worm out of
warm ground.
The Weather Man has read his
signs
And warns of snow on snow
Harsh winds, drifts, cold,
cold.
Do the beasts know?
I doubt his news for us
Is news for them.
Yet still they bask in the
sun and preen and sing.
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