Page 40 - Savoring
P. 40
Mary O’Connor
LOOKING AT BETTY BEER’S “FALSE SPRING III”
Remembering winter, I slide
into a shiver before your snow. 2010, that cruelest season
lasting so long my skin split
under its assault. I skidded
over its layers of ice, plunged
to the knees through snowcrusts into drifts, was bitten by pale
stingy winds twining round buildings to scrape and pierce flesh,
making it remember.
But here is winter tamed,
presentable: patches of green
show through, and if I keep my gaze
on the ground it is only to admire
diminishing snow mounds becoming
water round their unmounding rims—
from the soiled ones on Phillips,
to the clean ones in your yard—kind snow, giving its all to the sod, to the growing
promise of spring; and what is this lilac
shadow adding a madly hopeful note
to the whole melt? The pandemonium
of real spring is just round the corner.
Look, the tennis counts on 21st are to open Easter Sunday, and people will go on playing late by floodlight, demanding a season change. The clocks have moved forward. Demanding
a season change, we call it
Summer Time.
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