On that last day of winter the sun finally came out, and though the cars and rooftops were covered in frost I walked to the far fields with my coffee where there’s still horses, on Rock Meadow Farm.

It was early enough on a Sunday it was only me, though the half moon and birds saw it all, a gentle frost on the greens looked almost silver, like Christmas tinsel from a long time ago.

I came to the horses with their morning jackets and their earthy smell, the plastic feed buckets on the fence posts, empty.

And all about, the red-breasted robins and doves were getting ready for spring.

I walked where I did when we returned from Germany last year, and spring was different then, I’d take the dog on trails along the edge of the forest and think there’s so many places I wanted to be, it was hard to pick one.

And here the ground is muddy and mottled on the farm, a cock crows like a kid’s TV show, perfect for a time.

The clouds are like tail wisps or smoke tendrils, the same shape as the leafless birch trees hanging on—

And on this Sunday in the middle of March, there’s nowhere else I wanted to be.

The gurgle of the storm drains as it all slid off the shoulders, and the eyes on the trees where the limbs used to be, everything covered in moss, tie-dyed.

There wasn’t far to go for all this, just a half an hour by foot from our house.

And by the time I got there the sun was peeking through and it made the frost on the meadows sparkle where it caught the light.

My shoe got stuck in the mud and my foot came out and I had to hop, do a yoga pose to put it back on, and decided I’d turn back, and thought fine, I only came here for a poem…

And on my way back the boats and RVs alongside the big houses, they were ready to take their jackets off, too—

And some fog hung in the air, it even made the power lines look pretty—

And when I got back my mom called, and we sat on the front door step talking and then I went inside and cooked some bacon, I used the last of the red bell pepper, called down the kids, and poured the juice—

And after, I went out in the yard to watch the woodpeckers, and there were a million things I could do: it started off a thousand but none of them got done the last time, and things multiply when you let them go—

But I opened all the windows to let the bacon smell out, I vacuumed the ash from the wood stove and emptied the can in the compost, figured the rest of it we’d burn outside, in the fire pit this spring—

I bleached the kitchen island, scrubbed the toilets, washed the blankets and turned off the heat, opened the doors on the garage—

And then I lay on my back on the sofa in the den where it was warm; I read the last of my book and played an old record, I slipped it out of its sleeve, cleaned the dust from the grooves, flipped it…thought to hell with winter, it’s time for spring—go back from where you came, you’re through.

Categories: prose

Tags: nature imagery, poem, poetry, postaday, prose, spring poems, travel, William Pearse writer