A Foretaste of Spring

By Phil Stanley

Fields and woods were covered in deep snow

and the cycle paths too icy to cycle on,

so on stepping out of a railway carriage one night

in the foothills of Hoher Fläming,

I had to make my way over glazed cobbles

through a town already asleep

to a road, where I could walk in the tracks of tyres,

but I heard the snap of twigs and the crunch of flakes,

as something hidden among the pillars of trees

moved on when I did, paused when I chose to pause,

but never emerged, as if wary of being seen.

Within a fortnight, temperatures had soared

by more than 20 degrees centigrade,

but it took some time for ice on a pond to thaw,

then silvery fish lay side-up under the sheen

and even a pike lay dead in a thicket of reeds,

but catkins hung on a bunch of hazel-trees,

the wands of weeping willows became light green,

white snowdrops grew in clusters, crocuses rose

pale purple and yellow on flower-stems slim and frail

and winter aconite opened its yellow cups

by a pergola in the village of Schmerwitz.

In a pinewood by Schlamau

with only a chainsaw buzzing among the pines,

two couples of brimstone butterflies bob by

with their wings pale yellow, having survived the cold

in nooks and crannies among the evergreens,

and over the main lake in Wiesenburg

two mallord ducks fly croaking to and fro,

while on a veranda by a converted barn,

two elderly folk-musicians face the sun

and a lawn grown shaggy over the homes of moles

and adders slowly unwinding.