A Displaced Season

The snow melts.
First melt of the season.
The ground perfectly preserved,
a fall painting,
bright colors,
marred with dirt
and the first dark marks of decay.

If the weather stays warm,
the colors will fade fast in the sun.
All will become brown.

So you stand. You savor.
This moment.
This color. This interruption of winter.
This reminder of life
after death.
This reminder of your own resurrection,
late in life,
unexpected as a February thaw.

You breathe in the air.
Warm.
Strangely springlike.
A day.
A displaced season
of joy.

About this poem. 

We had a crazy warm day yesterday here in Southwest Vermont. Seventy-two degrees. Snow melted. I am seeing the ground for the first time in months.

It’s a temporary thing. More bad weather is on the horizon. Still, it was a beautiful thing to drive to town yesterday. The colors of the fields were mostly browns and flattened greens, and yet they drew the eye as surely as a Van Gogh.

I am 62, in an unexpected place of joy in my life. Not perfect. Still marked with struggles and my long list of imperfections. But joy none the less.

Both, things to savor for every moment they exist.

Tom