This is about as topical as a poem can get, and about as Canadian as a Canadian poem can get. You can hear Laurence Hutchman (and co-feature Penn Kemp) read at our special National Poetry Month event on April 16th at the Landon Library.
Waiting for Spring
What is it about it about waiting for spring
as you look at disbelief at the white pages of the calendar
long past the vernal equinox
You’ve been waiting for a long time
looking out into the backyard
as if it were the frozen form of Pangaea
trying to reshape itself in time-lapse photography.
Yes, you’ve been waiting for the signs for some time now:
that subtle bright change in the afternoon sky in late January,
that moment when you sit in the Escort and feel that momentary
warmth (the first you sensed since late October)
And you fee the belief in a minor meteorological prophecy.
and feel the assurance of the wavering rays of the sunlight,
but then comes the deep freeze of February,
and there is the thin hope of the slow lengthening evenings,
count them –two minutes per day,
but you’re a long way from day light saving’s time.
And then, suddenly in spite of the frozen air,
you see water on the street,
and the first since God knows when
but you’re grateful….and then you have the pavement
becoming a tabula rasa, white and so dry,
surely spring must come now or soon,
but then the days of blizzards and shovels and sweat…
And then, the change, the thermometer surprisingly climbs
above zero and those glacial snow banks start to slowly melt
and you watch for patterns, the unexpected emergence of
grass, and the slow widening,
(ever slow diminishing of the snow)
Why don’t you live on the sunny side of the street?
The snow begins to undergo alterations as it moves into old age,
and you see the crystals begin to form,
and little prisms appear,
and every object now has an identity, an indentention.
The trees have no snow,
and the roofs are finally bare.
And nature becomes lyrical--
the water runs gurgling under little snow glaciers
which have begun to turn brown like tawny animals
(remember on the way home from school when you used to
break them off—sometimes ten feet at a time.
You were an icebreaker,
(remember when the coming of spring used to be fun.)
But you can see the discontent of winter still in the air
as neighbours go outside and can’t believe that CNN is wrong again,
and the neighbours still scraping of the morning frost
totally frosted off, and like more like refugees.
Some try to fight it.
You seem them out there with the pick axes and choppers
hacking away at their personal glaciers
as if it were a private personal affront,
and they stand like desperate Shakespearian actors
looking at the enigmatic spring skies
giving their Shakespearean soliloquies
Where art thou now, O Spring?
And you wait and listen for the birds.
©Laurence Hutchman
Waiting for Spring
What is it about it about waiting for spring
as you look at disbelief at the white pages of the calendar
long past the vernal equinox
You’ve been waiting for a long time
looking out into the backyard
as if it were the frozen form of Pangaea
trying to reshape itself in time-lapse photography.
Yes, you’ve been waiting for the signs for some time now:
that subtle bright change in the afternoon sky in late January,
that moment when you sit in the Escort and feel that momentary
warmth (the first you sensed since late October)
And you fee the belief in a minor meteorological prophecy.
and feel the assurance of the wavering rays of the sunlight,
but then comes the deep freeze of February,
and there is the thin hope of the slow lengthening evenings,
count them –two minutes per day,
but you’re a long way from day light saving’s time.
And then, suddenly in spite of the frozen air,
you see water on the street,
and the first since God knows when
but you’re grateful….and then you have the pavement
becoming a tabula rasa, white and so dry,
surely spring must come now or soon,
but then the days of blizzards and shovels and sweat…
And then, the change, the thermometer surprisingly climbs
above zero and those glacial snow banks start to slowly melt
and you watch for patterns, the unexpected emergence of
grass, and the slow widening,
(ever slow diminishing of the snow)
Why don’t you live on the sunny side of the street?
The snow begins to undergo alterations as it moves into old age,
and you see the crystals begin to form,
and little prisms appear,
and every object now has an identity, an indentention.
The trees have no snow,
and the roofs are finally bare.
And nature becomes lyrical--
the water runs gurgling under little snow glaciers
which have begun to turn brown like tawny animals
(remember on the way home from school when you used to
break them off—sometimes ten feet at a time.
You were an icebreaker,
(remember when the coming of spring used to be fun.)
But you can see the discontent of winter still in the air
as neighbours go outside and can’t believe that CNN is wrong again,
and the neighbours still scraping of the morning frost
totally frosted off, and like more like refugees.
Some try to fight it.
You seem them out there with the pick axes and choppers
hacking away at their personal glaciers
as if it were a private personal affront,
and they stand like desperate Shakespearian actors
looking at the enigmatic spring skies
giving their Shakespearean soliloquies
Where art thou now, O Spring?
And you wait and listen for the birds.
©Laurence Hutchman
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