Poetry Corner: The Beauty of Lake Avondale

An early blooming pair of cherry trees

trail their budding boughs on the water;

New life bursts their brown skins,

first, before anything else-- so fragile

to be so trusting of so much so early.

It’s been a hard-hearted winter.    

Pacing the barren banks,

a Canada goose pokes a webbed foot

into still- frigid Avondale Lake, shivers

violently at its icy touch.

A redundant sign commands:

Don’t feed the geese. After first frost,

most of the afternoon walkers fled

even farther south; they are strolling now

on innocent warm beaches in Mexico.

Here water and soil still recall

deep down inside them how

a once-a-century winter storm

locked down everything for a week

under a six inch sheet of snow and sleet.

When we were last together, love,

 it turned cold for late September; suddenly

there were golding edges on the cherry leaves,

and we were awkward as a couple of geese

testing water that ought to have warmed.

I hesitated: Not yet Not yet, but soon.

Soon. When it’s time.

March comes and the cherries bloom.

 I don’t believe in omens. Even so,

who’d think that a southern winter

would be so harsh or hang on so long?