Ready To Dance

Winter is finally unclutching its hand, offering up these gifts.

Photo by Jaunathan Gagnon on Unsplash

read or listen:

This is the real turning,
not a date on a calendar,
but the first Junco singing
as I place the dogs bowl
in the morning dark.

Now a Toad makes his brave rough-hoots
calling out to the sunrise for a mate,
knowing she is no longer a leathery bulging frozen treasure
buried for these many cold months,
now she is a hot pulse
waiting for his mount.

There is one lone yellow Crocus,
the early arriver
at the end of my driveway,
she may die in tonight's high desert cold,
but she is the first glory everyone will visit and marvel at.

Winter is finally unclutching its hand,
offering up these gifts.

When the sun is high and warm I’ll lay in the dirt
pulling my shirt up over my ridiculously white belly
feeling the eternal warmth,
imagining my cells waking up
along with one Junco, a Toad, and a Crocus,
all of us, ready to dance.