The In-Between Season

It is the in-between season.
The snow has melted.
Yes, there will be flurries, but it is fighting
a losing battle
against the spring that has not yet arrived.
The ground is brown, last year’s leftover harvest
littering the earth with dead things.

But look closely.
Tendrils of new grass are there,
under the corpses of winter.
Not yet emergent,
their inevitability is apparent.
Hope, suddenly, has a reason.

You have lived this cycle all your life,
so often and so deeply felt
that seasons no longer matter,
except the ones of your soul.

About this poem

Yesterday the woman I love and I were driving through the countryside near our home. The snow has melted and there is a thick thatch of dead hay and crops on the ground. Look closely and you can see the new grass.

How often my life has been like that! A beautiful thing, that in-between season, when hope begins to show itself.

The picture was taken in Surry County, Virginia.

Tom