Earliest Spring

If you ask my favorite season
I will always say fall.
Who can resist the copper
bright blue clarity of it?

Who can fail but delight
in harvest abundance,
sated, straw-colored animals
and pregnant moons?

Here in Minnesota,
spring is only a calculation
of freeze and thaw splitting
the distance from summer.

When is the last snow?
Don’t jump too early.
Parrying jabs and crosses,
potholes and mud.

But the earliest spring
fulfills promises
we should not overlook:
more life (not always a given).

It comes with light
that sings to seeds
and stirs the chickens
to lay again.