A New and Luring Springtime

A feeling in my bones

From within these tombs of glass and stone I am hypnotized by the song of a sprinkler. The grass pushing up below my feet and the unfolding blossoms are fed by a new and luring springtime.

Faintly heard there is a beckoning song in the wind and I follow. It takes me from this dying city…. its life is only seconds long.

I become a cloud in a distant place as I tease the stately crowns of mountains. The valley before me becomes my own as my soul empties into it.

Following the springtime into this valley I am born. Being nourished by this valley I will last forever.

I wrote the above poem back when I was in college a couple of hundred years ago. I came across it back in January while I was rifling through some old boxes of papers looking for something else. I re-read it and remembered how fond I was of that poem. It brilliantly encapsulated my college experience.

I thought of publishing it on Medium but that would have been seasonally inappropriate. After all, it was the dead middle of winter and the poem was about springtime. So I set it aside until today.

Today is the last day of February and the poem is still technically seasonally inappropriate. We still have three weeks left of winter. There are no sprinklers going off. The ground is still far too soggy wet and sponge-like from the insane amount of snow we’ve had this winter (so far) for the need for irrigation. But despite the lack of that wondrous beautiful sprinkler sound today was suddenly somehow appropriate for the silly poem.

The weather prognosticators called for a high temperature today in the upper fifties (Fahrenheit). I do not know just how high the temperature got because I do not carry a thermometer around with me and will someone please shoot me if I ever do. I went for a long, long nature walk today and I wore a very thin, light hoodie (unzipped). A third of the way into the walk I wished I had left the hoodie at home and had instead gone out in my shirt sleeves. I needed no thermometer to know that today was warmer than any day since before Halloween.

Yes, I knew that the weather was premature and spring was still hiding in the future. But today it came out of hiding and lovingly kissed me in the face. And I kissed back. Hard. Oh, what a joyful walk it was!

The birds were having some kind of whoopjamboree. I wasn’t the only one out enjoying nature today. Around here, thankfully, there is birdsong at all times of year — except during snowstorms or tornadoes — but today the volume of birdsong was many decibel levels higher than I’ve heard since…. well, since before Halloween.

The birds were screaming at the very top of their little lungs. Since the voice box of birds is located, not in their throats like humans, but at the top of their lungs, this was only ornithologically correct. But seriously, the birdsong along my nature walk was at a near-deafening volume. Every bird in the area was singing like crazy.

Being an extreme bird-lover, this really turned me on. It also got me in the mood for spring. It seriously impacted all my bodily functions and rhythms. And it profoundly flushed my noggin of its routinely dreary winter patterns. I wanted to rip off all my clothes and run through the fields naked.

Luckily, I did not do that and I managed to come home un-arrested. Soon I was once again walking along city sidewalks immersed in the sound of people and traffic as I headed home.

But then suddenly, while walking down a downtown city block I was overcome by a deafening sound that was louder than a Boeing 747 flying overhead. I stopped walking and looked skyward. I saw a gaggle of geese flying directly over my head. There must have been at least a hundred geese and every single solitary one of them were honking like there was no tomorrow. They were flying no more than a hundred to a hundred fifty feet above my noggin. All human noise faded into the background as the sound of more than a hundred honking geese echoed loudly through the world. The delightful cacophony was damn-near ear-shattering.

I stood perfectly still with my neck craned and my gaze looking upward. It was like God calling out to me. Gosh almighty, it was so loud! With my eyes I followed the flight of the flock as my ears shook with the vibrations left in their wake. They were flying northward towards the land of the cold and dark.

But then the lead goose in the formation turned to its left and headed west. The entire goose formation turned to the west simultaneously. Isn’t it incredible how birds use their collective mind to navigate? In a circular arc the birds headed to the west but they did not straighten out and keep heading west but rather they continued in their arc until they were finally headed south again, towards the land of warmth and light. They then straightened out and headed back in the direction from which they had come.

My sentiments exactly!

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