Spring Peeper · Virgina Kendall Area

Ode to Spring, Peeper

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by Barbara Sabol

Through your frozen sleep, dreams
of beetles, of robin song, of mud-sweet air, 
of what passes for love at the wetland’s edge. 

After a slow thaw, your heart resumes its lusty rhythm 
and you rustle awake in your snug of dead leaves 
under a fallen log. 

Small as a child’s thumb, piercing as a night train,
you stir the woods back to what you sing for⸺
another spring.

So begins the boreal forest song. Elsewhere 
ice caps weep into the sea; waters warm 
and rise
                                                                      yet now

this enormous chorus, a halleluiah 
of miniature bells, beckons me out
to the moon-struck backyard.

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Traveling Stanzas community arts projects bring poetry to people’s everyday lives through innovative methods and digital platforms.