Slowing down Spring

A path dividing a wheat and a oilseed rape field filled with flowers and insects under a rain-heavy sky.

.

            Slowing Down Spring

Leaden heavy clouds lay upon the land,

Slowing its spin, it seems, the wind

Whistling chill, winds back spring:

So all pauses, apparently, and allows us,

Perhaps, appreciate all a little longer:

.

Continued calling of song thrushes,

Tree-creepers, warblers and woodpeckers;

The candle cones perched upon pines;

Chandeliers of chestnut blooms

Letting petals swirl to gather in drifts

And dropping fruits of tiny infant seeds;

New green sprigs on twigs of spruce trees;

Dandelions, the sign of spring, still

The dominant design of spring,

Drawing swarms of insects, revived

As running rivers; glowing gloss and

Ripples of graining barley, regaining

The aspect of May in Spain; golden

Sunspots, when rays sneak out of clouds,

That simply seep into souls like

Helium to help them soar…

Making every day a delayed delight

.

We might not see for many more:

As spring shortens ever more and

Assimilates to frightful summer 

Sooner than we’re prepared for.

Rainbow marks the return of the sun, to fields not fully seeded from the earlier drought. We got a storm that dropped a lot of water this weekend which hopefully has saved the harvestt.

.

We had a few weeks with cooler temperatures, which was a big relief, even in Navarra. Not so much rain in many places, but it gave us time to really see the green before it turns to gold. Which it was threatening to too soon this hear – to dusty tan and brown, too. And it seems spring will shorten as we go forward into climate chaos.

.

Of course, in our village the verges went brown after the council yet again sprayed it with glyphosphate… And one local farmer did the same to his field verges, which just ruins my day as I cycle up the hill…

It’s just ugly, apart from idiotic etc… But it runs a brown line all the way up… in an area which has a natural park and is advertised to tourists to go hiking and mushroom picking in the forests above these fields…