The sun rises a little higher in the sky every day. With no foliage to shield its glare, it exposes the worst of winter’s detritus: the glint of a beer can on the side of the road, a sudden spread of mold along the base of the porch. If you look carefully, though, you’ll notice a reddening in the underbrush and the witch hazel’s first gaudy yellow tassels fluttering in the breeze. And yesterday afternoon a platoon of robins commandeered the flattened wildflower field, moving in formation as they picked their way through the soggy stubble. Thaw and freeze; freeze and thaw. There’s been no thick blanket of white this year. Instead, the remnants of our last storm have been scattered like used rags across the tired lawn for weeks now. The image of melting snow as laundry is one that the Pulitzer Prize-winning midwestern poet Ted Kooser employs below with his usual home-spun charm.
Late February
by Ted Kooser
The first warm day,
and by mid-afternoon
the snow is no more
than a washing
strewn over the yards,
the bedding rolled in knots
and leaking water,
the white shirts lying
under the evergreens.
Through the heaviest drifts
rise autumn’s fallen
bicycles, small carnivals
of paint and chrome,
the Octopus
and Tilt-A-Whirl
beginning to turn
in the sun. Now children,
stiffened by winter
and dressed, somehow,
like old men, mutter
and bend to the work
of building dams.
But such a spring is brief;
by five o’clock
the chill of sundown,
darkness, the blue TVs
flashing like storms
in the picture windows,
the yards gone gray,
the wet dogs barking
at nothing. Far off
across the cornfields
staked for streets and sewers,
the body of a farmer
missing since fall
will show up
in his garden tomorrow,
as unexpected
as a tulip.