Deep Winter, Now Gone

It is the first day of National Poetry Month and this blog is declared to be officially open or perhaps I should say “re-open”.  Blog posts have not been made for quite sometime and what a perfect time to re-open Journey On to readers!  Inspiration for this came when I took a photo of the OPEN sign outside The Rock House Ice Cream Shop in my town of Palmer Lake.  What better way to begin a new month, a new commitment to my blog and of all times-April. In honor of this, I will post a poem from my book Journey On: Beauty and Grit Along the Way from the section titled “Journey On to Spring”:

Deep Winter, Now Gone

 

April sun slips behind jagged peaks,

a lone Ponderosa long exposed

stands broken, splintered, like me.

Heavenly turmoil rolls in uninvited,

staking a claim I never knew existed.

I clench my fists in the windy rain

and scream like the tattered red tail

perched high in the distance.

 

Spring changes the land,

aspens with bent branches filled with swelling buds

look less gray, ready to birth new leaves.

The winter-ravaged land bathes

 in the drenching snowmelt.

To the east, misty sunshine gives way to a

a rainbow of soft Crayola colors.

I long to take my paint brush

create my own canvas

and sweep my palette across the skies.

 

I climb the rocky path towards home.

The red tail on his post

looks down on my noisy steps.

I need more time to navigate

this darkened footpath,

to break loose and move

toward clearing skies

of a deep winter now gone.