ANOTHER conversation with myselfHILLSIDE IN SPRINGTIME

Looking out over the hillside in midwinter,
I could just barely believe the brown and gray trees
Would ever become green again.
It happens the same very year...
The loss of hope that the earth will become soft again,
And thick, hot life as we know it in summer will resume.

These cycles of death and life, cold and hot,
Gray drab and brilliant, dazzling color
Are the most common and endearing characteristics
Of this uncommon satellite inconspicuously fixed
In its orbit around the Father sun
That rules its collection of maiden planets.

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Do animals going into their winter sleep
Know they will wake in springtime,
Or do they go into that deep darkness
The way we slip into sleep,
Welcoming it with no fear
Of being lost in it forever.

The natural cycles, the ones keyed to sun and moon,
Are the ones that our blood speaks to us about
As it courses through our veins.
Whatever changes they bring
Are the changes we can trust
To be not more than we can bear.

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When the first warm days of spring come
And the earth still cool, welcomes us barefoot
To tread the soft, damp trail through the garden,
We marry with nature again and promise
Hangs heavy all around that life is good
And all things reproduce themselves and endure.

Perhaps persist is more accurate then endure.
There is a pushiness to this verdant invasion
That rushes across the land each spring.
There are explanations we are expected to accept
Without question about the tilting of the earth
In its eternal dance with the sun.

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The people who live in tropics
Are treated always to the lush green throb
Of life without interruption,
But what they miss is the annual surprise
Of forsythia and lilac followed by the glorious green explosion
That begins at the bottom and sweeps up the mountainside.

If this mountain in May is the color of life,
What is this brown and gray?
Is it any wonder Monet
Preferred the green and purple
Throb of springtime
To the static cold color of winter.