Page 6 - Savoring
P. 6
Mary O’Connor
WAITING
It’s warm and getting warmer but the trees still look like winter
though puny shoots (of crocus, tulip?) point up, greening garden beds,
the largest lumps of snow have disappeared into the ether, while
the ground the melting snow once muddied softens, stiffens, lumpy, waiting.
Something large, impatient, taps its fingernails on dry wood: get on with it, get on with it, it goes against a sapless pine—invisible, and tapping.
It’s all been dead for so long, crouching fearful, lolling, barely there, but “gathering its strength” they tell you. Will enough be eked to fill
the fields with soy and wheat, the beds with lungwort, phlox, geraniums, or even weeds? I’m waiting.
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