Spring - old images and a poem

old illustration from 1880s children's book

Grandma's childhood friends, fishing in southeast Washington, c. 1911

The vernal equinox is today, and people on other blogs talk about their green grass and daffodils.  It'll be a while before that kind of spring comes to southern Wisconsin.  There are signs.  We picked watercress the other day, and I have a little vase full of pussy willows.  The cat has stopped keeping me company in bed, and I finally removed one of the blankets.  Some other signs are not tied to the weather, like the high school basketball tournaments, and the orange road construction cones coming out of hibernation.  I have faith; spring will come when it's good and ready.

Ice Age

by Pam Lewis, in the 2009 Wisconsin Poets Calendar

Sixteen thousand years ago

a cold clockwork brought the ice

to this ridge and the land beyond,

the earth still combed and pitted,

giant bones of mammoths buried

in our own marrow.

Now the prairie grasses sprout

in choruses of cowlicks at our feet,

while pleated black roofs

stretch in hosts of triangles to the horizon;

and a shiver runs up the spine

as an unseen landscape advances like a glacier.