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Daffodils blooming in the neighborhood. Copyright Joan Z. Rough
Spring seems to be upon us here in Virginia. Daffodils, Winter Jasmine and Witch Hazel are splashing the still brown land with yellow. Next month forsythia will follow.
I wrote the following poem remembering what spring, particularly March, was like when I lived in Vermont. It was still a season for snow but it also held the promise of emergence. While I trudged to the barn in the middle of the night to check up on my pregnant ewes to see if they had given birth, here in Virginia daffodils were blooming. I travel further south on Friday for our civil rights trip, wondering what other flowers might already be blooming in those places I have never been. I will be gone for a week and hope to post a few lines every day about what I am experiencing. If that is not possible I will write about it when I return.
Spring
Snow spits ewes bulging with promise are cloistered inside
I count days watching bags swell vulvas blushing red by night patrol the wind riddled barn filled with the silence of sleeping hens
At dawn one ewe shifts and strains feeling the whisper soaking her body small hooves emerge in purple blue satin that rips rushing the lamb to the straw
Tumbling legs harden he readies his burden butts pokes finding the teat dripping colostrum
Somewhere to the south daffodils push toward the light
jzr, 1990
How lucky you are to see signs of spring…we’re still mired in cold, although today’s precipitation is rain and not snow…Progress of a sort, at least! I’ll keep my thoughts trained on those daffodils “somewhere to the south.”