New Green
It is lovely to watch the sunlight
The breeze flowing through the leaves
To listen to the silence
New green everywhere
Poppies, bright magenta flowers,
Gardens growing
The foghorn bleats
Gulls wing overhead
Birds in the bush are noisy
Spring day with rain
Puddles and dripping and gutters full
Cats must stay indoors
The seasons change, the trees fill out, grasses grow, wildflowers carpet the land, and allergies abound with winds blowing tiny particles of yellow dust, spores of life from evergreen trees. The wind, which is relentless and blowing at 25 or 30 miles per hour, is brisk, even cold despite sunshine grasping the petals of poppies and tiny yellow flowers and flinging them open to be sucked at by busy bees. It is spring on the coast and the ocean waves are frantic racing forward, tumbling and tossing, torn by the same wind willy-nilly flinging pollen about. The nose reacts with sneezing.
I watch each year as the neighbor’s tree turns from bleak, bare branches to the new green. My spirits lift in expectation of this new life.
The farmer in the valley by the side of the highway discs the field. The rotors turn the blades over and over, the tight dirt splits, gives up its hold, and dark soil bubbles up and rolls around exposing the tiny crawling critters of the land. Crows catch on right away as do flashy redwing blackbirds as they descend upon the feast. Are earthworms in the mix? A memory of youthful times sprinting from row to row of overturned soil picking up the soft, wiggling worms so prized for bait for fishing trips to the streams and ponds on the northeast of my early life. I wasn’t much for the fishing part of it, but capturing the worms caught my fancy.
The farmer in the valley by the side of the road of the highway rides a tractor with an attachment along the disked field. Then seeds are popped in the gullies of the rows, and they await the warming sun before pushing up a first new leaf of this season’s crop. What will it be? Snow peas, broccoli, strawberries? Again, the memory comes rushing back from a more distant locale. Corn. Rows and rows of sweet corn. My then 12-year-old mind wonders, how soon will August come for harvest?
Time is greatly on my mind as it swiftly flies by, one season turning into another. I am no longer “new green” but more a russet brown that crinkles in the breezes. A leaf, torn from its hold on the branch, tumbling and tossing along the road, blown this
way and that. I and the cat no longer go hunting for worms or field mice. We are content, I with a warm sweater and he with a plush pillow to sit on and dream in the afternoon sunshine.
It is an Easter world. New Green.