A Season's Grudge Reprised

Spring and birdsong have crept through my little forest on fog trails
Under loam and matte of leaf and stem I sensed the bulge of bulb and tendril
(Although that false and mischievous cloud obscured my view.)
Then Winter’s vapor did as vapor will and yielded late to fat flakes fallen
Heaps upon heaps of this bold reminder that season’s change can hold a grudge
Thus in an hour hid all victory from despair and his companion fear
They’ve found their way from East of Eden to my doorstep and into my garden place
Spring has held her tongue and awaits her cue in the wings of the story’s drama
I know her being to be right there in hiding, idling for a constellation’s arrival,
Pending a degree of heat and a lumen of light and a plodding turn of celestial arc
But only because I have seen the play before, just as I was last a seed awaiting
Window glass and wood frames the sadness within and the purity without
The snow has come a last time to bundle tight our expectation
And we will wait under this last shroud of denial until March bursts on
An arrow to her mark at downstage center in the footlights’ special warmth
Expectation of the story known still yields excitement in our hero’s wrath
I wish death not on any living thing except the bitter breath of winter
Living, like dying, isn’t fallow when furrows belie the field
Only furrows broken from below will beggar the sun’s return
And choice greenness, once again a hobo in search of home,
Arrives at where we are to be taken in as a child, our steward
The stage is set afire with light and all the characters are afoot
The properties are placed and the book is solved and put to voice
Implements of sound and light await the touch of action sewed
Tilling ground without a plow breaks the plowman, not the soil.
And none but broken earth will render birth and earth renewed
The white-crested daffodil can shiver a while to strengthen stem and petal
And earn the right to gaze where we dare not – straight into the sun.
So in the wings is Spring in costume with her painted face in study ready
And I, the plowman, here stand promising her I will not fail to cue her line aright
And I will beat her sword into my plowshare and take her path
Where she will lead, into her Summer’s promise I will follow.