there may be ice in Texas, but here Spring is on the way...

[pachamama.livejournal.com]

Cycles

Today, if you listen, you can hear the rough breath
of the early harrows, the human rhythm sing
in the deep ingathered stillness of the earth,
the strong Earth rising in its early Spring...

The word is old, but never seems outdated
and every year arrives like something new,
though it has come so often. Always anticipated,
though not once did you catch it. It caught you.

Even the old leaves of the wintered oak
seem in this late light, some future hue.
The winds exhcange a word in their own tongue.

The leafless trees are black, and yet the horse-dung
heaped up in the fields, a richer black.
Each hour grows younger as it passes through.

-- Don Paterson
from Orpheus, his version of Rilke's Die Sonette an Orpheus
Faber and Faber, 2006