A Morning in Early Spring
First light, and under stars
our elm glides out of darkness
to settle on its nest of
shadows,
spreading its feathers to shake
out
the night. Above, a satellite-
one shining bead of mercury
bearing thousands of voices-
rolls toward the light in the
east.
The Big Dipper, for months left
afloat in a bucket of stars,
has begun to leak. Each morning
it settles a little into the
north.
A rabbit bounces over the yard
like a knot at the end of a rope
that the new day reels in,
tugging
the night and coiling it away.
A fat robin bobs her head,
hemming a cloth for her table,
pulling the thread of a worm,
then neatly biting it off.
My wife, in an old velour robe,
steps off a fifty-yard length
of the dawn, out to the road
to get the newspaper, each step
with its own singular sound.
Each needle in the windbreak
bends to the breeze, the
windmill
turns clockwise then ticks to a
stop.
No other day like this one.
A crocus like a wooden match-
Ohio Blue Tip – flares in the
shadows
that drip from the downspout.
This is a morning that falls
between
weathers, a morning that hangs
dirty gray from the sky,
like a sheet from a bachelor’s
bed,
hung out to dry but not dry yet,
the air not warm or cool,
and my wife within it, bearing
the news
in both hands, like a tray.
Along the road to east and west,
on the dark side of fence posts,
thin fingers of shadowy
snowdrifts
pluck and straighten the fringe
on a carpet of fields. Clouds
float in
like ships flying the pennants
of geese,
and the trees, like tuning
forks,
begin to hum. Now a light rain
fingers the porch roof, trying
the same cold key over and over.
Spatters of raindrops cold as
dimes,
and a torn gray curtain of cloud
floats out of a broken window
of sky. Icy patches of shadows
race over the hills. No other
day
like this one, not ever again.
Now, for only a moment, sleet
sifts across the shingles, pale
beads
threaded on filaments of rain,
and the wind dies. A threadbare
pillowcase of snow is shaken out
then draped across the morning,
too thin to cover anything for
long.
None other like this.
All winter, the earth was sealed
by a lid of frost, like the
layer
of paraffin over the apple
jelly,
or the white disk of chicken fat
on soup left to cool, but now,
in cold tin sheds with dripping
roofs,
old tractors warm their engines,
burning the feathery mouse nests
from red exhausts, rattling the
jars
of cotter pins, shaking gaskets
on nails and stirring the dirty
rags
of cobwebs. And young farmers
who have already this morning
put on the faces of ancestors
and have shoved the cold red
fists
of grandfathers, fathers, and
uncles
deep in their pockets, stand
framed
in wreaths of diesel smoke,
looking out over the wet black
fields
from doors that open into
spring.
In the first light I bend to one
knee.
I fill the old bowl of my hands
with wet leaves, and lift them
to my face, a rich broth of
browns
and yellows, and breathe the
vapor,
spiced with oils and, I suspect,
just a pinch of cumin. This is
my life,
none other like this.
Ted Kooser
Kooser, Ted. “A Morning in Early
Spring.” Splitting An Order. Port Townsend,
Washington:
Copper Canyon Press, 2014. pp. 56-59.
