The past few days have been a reminder of how grateful I am for the bountiful beauty and power of nature. Living in Wisconsin, our lives ebb and flow with the changing seasons, sometimes winter is unrelenting and it’s a struggle just to get out the door for our day-to-day lives. We are restored in the spring when the changing weather brings us hope and quells the itchiness of spring fever. Summer is our reward, a time for leisure and vacations. In the autumn we reap the harvest of the land and prepare for the long, cold nights again, the cycles of change repeated.
Driving to work yesterday, with the sky so blue, almost translucent, contrasting with the lush green of lawns and trees, I thought how quickly we forget the difficult times and the winters of our lives when the summer is so green.
Blue sky, green grass
Summer So Green
Summer so green you forget its absence
when followed by the burnt colors of autumn.
Leaves take flight and signal arrival
of the Midwestern winter; cold moons,
inky nights and bitter winds
transform newly fallen whiteness
into peppered piles curbside
stuffed with trash and sand,
stubbornly refusing to melt,
after which tender shoots rise again,
blooms open in hopeful pastels
and the primary colors of spring,
awakening us from our somnolence,
as the sun burns bright
and longer, the sky bluer,
and the grass is green again,
so green you forget its absence.
LLL