Morning Poem

Reflections on Spring’s Shoulder

by Laura Parker Roerden

Winter’s frozen fingers still
clutch the ground,
unwilling to yield to a muddy grave.

Some years are like that:
everything worn to the bone,
promise blunt and fragmented.

This morning has no choice
but to rise clumsily against a thick
attempt at erasure.

At best, a hole had been rubbed
into now paper
thin winter.

Rusty bits on trees
suggest disuse.
Nuggets of shriveled fruit,

now hardened
like silent stone,
do not speak of potential.

It’s easy to understand on a day like this
that what we are about to be given
is as easily (and too quickly) taken away.

Still, very soon we will forget
and be lulled into knowing
that rain,

like a child’s hand,
is the bird
upon which we fly into riotously blooming fields.

And our hearts, like leaves, will
stretch before us in a shimmering
river of dressed warmth.

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(Photography by Ben Roerden, age 9, 5th generation farmer.)
© Laura Parker Roerden 2016. All rights reserved.

Laura Parker Roerden is the founder and executive director of Ocean Matters and the former managing editor of Educators for Social Responsibility and New Designs for Youth Development. She serves on the boards of Women Working for Oceans (W20) and Earth, Ltd. and is a member of the Pleiades Network of Women in Sustainability. She is also a part-time, fourth-generation farmer.