Another Cold Wet Spring and an Old Poem
(Photo by Todd Vogel, nature photographer extraordinaire)
It’s been a brutal winter across much of the U.S. A lot of us got a taste of warmer weather, the return of familiar birds, the first brave appearances of the early bulb plants just before the Equinox. Then-bam!-right back into a pattern of blustery cold rain and even the return of snow for a lot of folks. Add misery of hail and sleet and an early outbreak of tornados across the Midwest and a lot of folks I know seem plunged into despair.
Here in McHenry County we have a cold rain again. Temperatures are supposed to drop later this afternoon. We could have snow flurries overnight into tomorrow morning and maybe real, accumulating snow this weekend. Daughter Carolynne up near Madison has already seen the return of relentless snow.
The meteorologists and other prognosticators say we are in for a long, wet, cold spring. Been there. Done that. In fact, it is not so unusual in these parts where I remember humdinger blizzards in late March and early April as well teeth chattering cold rain on Memorial Day.
In fact, this is what Spring is often like around here. Yet through it all those persistent crocus insist on poking their defiant heads through the snow, sap runs in the maples, the first tufts break out on the pussy willows. The full flower of the season may be delayed, but it cannot be stopped.
Several years ago, maybe a little latter in the year, a chance encounter on a raw morning on my way to work as a school custodian inspired a poem, one of the earliest written that was included in my little book We Build Temples in the Heart (Skinner House Books, Boston, 2004).
Lilacs Again
Lilacs in the soft gray glove
of a cold, wet morning-
"Where has spring gone?"
demand shivering lips
as the asker speeds
to a cozy nest
of cappuccino and scones.
As if spring were all red and yellow tulips,
brilliant, tall, and proud,
swaying with God's breath
amid a verdant sweep,
dappled with sun and shade,
filtered through a glory of apple blossoms
under a perfect sky.
And when the days pass and the gray is vanquished,
the sun restored to its throne,
the lilacs, past perfection,
wilt and brown along their tips.
"Too bad the lilacs failed this year,"
the morning voice,
refreshed by proper spring,
chirps with the barest trace
of disappointment.
--Patrick Murfin