Fool’s Spring

Posted bywordsandcoffee1Posted inPoetryTags:, , , , 
Stillness settled over the cornfields like a premonition. Crusted remnants of snow croaked under our footfalls as charcoal clouds hovered menacingly in the western horizon. Meteorologists paraded fear and radar images; school administrators called emergency meetings, and local businesses flipped their signs to "closed".  



tree branches quake now
the earth blanketed below
two fresh feet of snow

This week’s Wea’ve Written Weekly asks us to write a haibun. Kerfe is this week’s host and here’s the full prompt:

  • Compose a haibun that contrasts past and present;
  • From Poetry.org:
    • In How to Haiku, Bruce Ross writes, “If a haiku is an insight into a moment of experience, a haibun is the story or narrative of how one came to have that experience.”

These photos I took just a few days apart helped to inspire my poem this week, as we faced a winter storm that closed schools (or switched us to virtual learning) and covered the roads in drifting snow. We received about 16 inches of fresh snow over the course of two days, though some places had two feet or more. Just when we thought it was starting to look a bit spring-like, we were deceived! That’s the usual with winter in the Midwest, though, so nobody was too surprised. And I did still see a college student in shorts and a sweatshirt outside yesterday when it was all of 8° Fahrenheit! I must be getting old as I was shivering in my winter coat and hat. 😀

16 thoughts on “Fool’s Spring”

  4. I actually enjoy this feature of a midwest winter experience. When we have the false spring and then a substantial reminder that winter has not let its grip on the season just yet. Happily, the warmth of this year’s “false spring” has the maple trees fooled enough to have the sap running earlier than ever before! The new freeze may slow it down and then resurge once spring really arrives again. Too bad that the glass containers went up in cost, so it won’t allow the pricing to go down. But at least there will be plenty of maple products on the shelves this year.

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