Summer House: Easter Visit

The snow is old and rotten and gives way
beneath my boot and my leg plunges
up to my thigh in what is left of winter.
You offer a hand to pull me from the post hole
and though I don’t need it, I grab hold and cling to you.
Our plodding pace disappoints me;
I want to be there.

We reach the end of the snow choked road
soaked and thinking only of dry clothes and a fire.
My skin from thigh to toes is red and raw.
As I pull the wool pants up around my hips
I turn from you, embarrassed,
and pretend to look out at the driveway
which is riddled to bits with slivers of water
carving its way to the pocked ice of the lake.

I don’t know what I expected...
That a visit to the summer house would be a visit to summer?
That we could skip mudseason and its awkwardness altogether?
The rotting debris of winter,
the silence before the birds,
the brown time with the seeds below
the sodden earth are still deciding what they will be?

I guess I wanted the thaw -- the word that melts --
begins with a thick stubborn mouth
and then, caught in a yawn,
ends in a wide open flowing ahh.

I wanted it to flood me like blood
returning to frozen limbs
I wanted it to sing and sing
and lift me from my heavy self
the way a cat hoists her kitten
by the nape of its helpless neck.
I wanted to be plucked from the maw of spring
and delivered, wet and shivering, into our blossoming