The Path to the Spring House

She got the path to the spring house

cleared after winter had ended

and the snow melted mostly away,

clearing away the autumn debris left

mashed and pressed under a season of ice:

the leaves she hadn’t raked up

before the snow started to fall

and the branches and twigs snapped

and fallen in the winter wind;

she cut the stalks of bordering plants

still standing, topless and un-blossomed,

and swept up now the reddened needles dropped

early that fall from the pine trees’ shedding.

And trimming back the rough edges of grass

from the walk, she revealed to us spring

shooting up in the cracks of the paving stones,

making its way from winter’s cold and our home’s

dry heat to the sunlit rooms of summer,

gauzy curtains blown out in a breeze carrying aloft

the sounds of the lake, the waves’ gentle slap on the shore

and the loons’ call warbling, the song birds’ song

returning, too, reminding us of the years

gone past and the years ahead,

made fresh in the season changing.