The Underbelly of Spring
In Vermont, they have two seasons:
Winter, plus a week of bad sledding.
In Puerto Rico, you wouldn’t know spring
if it rose up and bit you in your tanned ass.
In Wisconsin, it’s freeze, then thaw, then
freeze again… then roast in your bedding.
In Upstate NY, you go to school to get
ready for finals and sweat through class.
Spring is an unpredictable, mercurial,
unsentimental storm of hot and cold.
April may shower, but May does not
guarantee flowers or blue skies.
May is here, yet Spring has snowstorms
hidden in the seasonal envelope’s fold.
It’s muddy. It’s messy and inconvenient.
Spring hides behind a sunny-side disguise.
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Izy wanted the truth about Spring… all the bad parts. I’ve been through the season in every place mentioned, and I guarantee that I never put away the snow shovel until after Mother’s Day. We once had a surprise storm on (no joke) May Day, and it dumped three feet of wet snow, made me pull little Riley back to the house from the ditched car on a plastic sled, and still the Jeeps and SUVs were out on the road doing donuts. That’s the storm that made possible the picture of Riley above! Whodathunkit?
Also at my poetic all-season resort, Poets United. Peace, Amy
Sharp Little Pencil 