Atop the wooden bridge to the path below,
an observation on a gray day during
this final month of winter:

The sloping canyon takes sanctuary under new grass
dewy at mid-morning when I’d first left the house.
This time yearly each blade reaches tall as it will,
and what now? Summer is not yet here to dry us.
Do the fields know what they wait for?

On the hillsides deeply pigmented, circular leaves
posing as lily pads out of water, herded together
under dozing afternoon’s dull-white sky are waiting
until a time hundreds will bloom orange, red, alive.
I whisper to the nasturtiums, “not yet”

knowing once they are born, days are
limited. They will again lie dormant,
receding to safety of roots by summer,
hermetic the months between rains.
I mourn each loss of flowers, but

until these moments come to pass
it is this earliest promise of aliveness,
canyons that sit still as morning,
the noiseless coming of spring
that I love most of all.