Heidi Mordhorst hosts today’s Poetry Friday roundup at My Juicy Little Universe.
It’s a moody day here, this Poetry Friday: fog, rain, wind…we have it all, all day. Not surprisingly, the sheep were reluctant to leave the comfort of the barn this morning, and have chosen to protest in groups of two and three all morning when they see me pass within view.
Bowie, our guardian dog, seems utterly uninterested in her job today. Not even the enormous truck carrying sap collected from the woods around us to the maple sugar house up our hill, normally a source of much barking and racing around, can get her to move from her dry spot under the barn eaves.
In the midst of this soggy gloom, I notice that the daffodils are coming up nicely, as are a few crocuses here and there. The pastures are greening, too, and the tiniest of buds have begun to appear on our apple trees. I no longer need my heaviest winter jacket, and even gloves and hat can be dispensed with for most of the day.
The world may be crashing and burning, but Nature remains constant in her promise that after Winter comes Spring.
Early Spring in the Field by Tom Hennen
The crow’s voice filtered through the walls of the farmhouse makes sounds of a rusty car engine turning over. Clouds on a north wind that whistles softly and cold. Spruce trees planted in a line on the south side of the house weave and scrape at the air. I’ve walked to a far field to a fence line of rocks where I am surprised to see soft mud this raw day. No new tracks in the mud, only desiccated grass among the rocks, a bare grove of trees in the distance, a blue sky thin as an eggshell with a crack of dark geese running through it, their voices faint and almost troubled as they disappear in a wedge that has opened at last
the cold heart of winter.