The Walk (an edit from years ago)

The Walk 

...

I wanted to embody spring

but the snow kept coming.

The sun kept hiding and

I couldn't wait for green.

So I made my own verdant way

in a shouting mess of sun-backed snowflakes

to a corner of yard that begged no pomp or parade.

In the whip of a windy afternoon, 

I asked birch of her branches

how to find depth in different shades of brown.

I asked birds of loud noises

how to sing falsetto.

I tried to look at what would come of a day where

the sun would stop hiding her face. 

Mine, tender and tired, forces a walk to higher ground.

This old coat of down and a woolen pair of mittens

keeps my husk in layers.

Unfurling now seems like an act of perdition.

I remember that Spring promises

and melts, all in one breath.

I find my pulse quicken, oddly overtaken

as this fat wetness slaps my cheeks 

and rude Magpies curse and caww at my presence.

Salty brims of eyelashes mix with the extra of this miniature squall, 

And I let it. For what is surrender without release?

To bend and not break, as they say.

I turn back towards the warm

 of my glowing winter home,

knee-high boots clonk clonking, 

I stomp back through hot streaks of evening sunshine, 

trying to forget my heated and unsung song on the hill. 

The wind whips. And my breath slows once again.

I approach the heavy door and the few steps inside.

 In the distance, a neighbor dog tells me his stories. 

A crow beckons his mate to a roadside kill.

Winter-fed deer weave skinny shadows across the horizon.

Not here. Not yet. But soon. 

One strangely lit flurry at a time.

One sunshine slog in March, 

A tune is born from salt.