Even amid the snow still on the ground, you can hearken to the signs of Spring. Flocks of male Red-winged Blackbirds are back in the wetlands singing and setting up hearth and home for their ladies soon to return. Even in the chill air, you can smell the sweetness that tells the tale of Sugar Maples being tapped for syrup. Spring is coming! It’s a process. A moment of equal day and night will take place on March 20th, and there after until the Summer Solstice, the days will lengthen and the air will warm. But Spring grows; it plays; it tarries; and yet it fades into summer all too fast. So enjoy the spring moments as they come – in fits and starts.

Welcome Spring!

Spring’s Promise
By Arianna Alexsandra Collins

Laughter is a perching bird
singing his heart’s delight
of nest, of mate, of the future nestled
beneath his belly.

And laughter is in the wind
blowing the snow into the sun.
The rains fall
massaging the soil until
seeds like knots
soften
their veins supping on compost
preparing to greet the season in unfurling shades of green.

Spring is the promise of release
birth waters bearing down on the valley
a freshet to feed the masses of returning shad and lamprey.

It is in this place I plant my body
reveling in a river of snow melt and wriggling bodies.
The sun warms the nest that is my heart
nourishing dreams like eggs
breaking into a fluttering of wings
laughing
“I am alive! I am alive!”

Copyright 2007, Arianna Alexsandra Collins

Arianna Alexsandra Collins, naturalist, poet, writer, and wild edible enthusiast lives in Ashfield, MA.

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