Spring to Come

"The first fact on January third
is the fact of winter,
more than dead banks, lost wars,
violence erupting here and there."  – Holm, from "Winter Facts"










Against the orders of a new world,
we set out on a short trip,
out onto the periphery of city,
where bald cornfields lay decrepit;
no TV screen was going to duplicate
what we see as our midwestern
ancestors still move through those scenes,
rough clothes, dour lips, hats,
cold days and minds in the wet.
We keep going through the years.
Let us go way back to geology.
Does anyone else's mind work like this?
Time is the new exploration
if your imagination has not yet halted.
Ridgeline of sandstone carry off
in every direction outside of Barre.
Forests, leafless, stick out like stubble
off the dreary cheeks of hillsides.
We have music inside the car,
so we are safe, hold back the boredom,
"who do you think would make a good farmer?
what do people do all day in the country?"
Rise up through the near dead fauna.
Blessings of green scattered
here in there under old invasives.
I pose the question whether all this would
look more fun from three thousand feet.
I point out a circling eagle.
Have you ever seen how the steely
sharpness of the eye wondering nothing?