The Seasons at Great Meadows Wildlife Refuge
Summer
rotted tree stumps,
splaying bright green ferns,
and skunk cabbage
and rich thick dark mud,
like a chocolate milkshake
Autumn
Raining pine needles
and leaves,
and the earth
is soft and
brown beneath my feet.
Canadian geese
honk melodiously overhead.
Winter
Frozen fields dusted with snow,
frozen ponds surrounded by trees
stiff as rusted robots,
clouds are fuzzy cracks in the sky
letting out the blue.
Spring
I notice these great giant bluish fish
in the shallows, splashing and bumping
into the dried, cracked reeds, but I’m thinking again
of Christine my first girlfriend so many years ago,
remembering so clearly her dirty blonde hair,
her green eyes like dragonflies,
her soft pink lips unsoiled yet by the rigors
and toil and injustices of life.