The thaw

You can smell the thaw coming before it does—
a long time, too, before the meadow is green
and the wildflowers emerge
yellow and shine in the green meadow.
When it is still grey and ice,
and seeds hold being unexpressed.

This is part of it too.
The growing, that is, and believing
that it means something.
That everything is sacrament. Even time,
which moves loosely and runs
according to the spirit—
that silent, grassy, generous spirit—as

through the window the bare earth
sloughs the winter from its shoulders.
Right on schedule.