In early spring

the trees, still naked, slough off

their blankets of snow and cold,

slow in waking from their winter sleep.

They reach out their branches to the blue sky

and sunshine, swaying and twisting, stretching

themselves in the wind, this limbering

of bodies stiff from a long season’s rest

and age, and in the springtime giddiness we all

fall prey to, they delight the passing clouds,

sending them scampering across a windswept sky,

bringing with them the geese and ducks and loons

back to the lake, back to the home I share with them. 

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