The Earth turns in her growing skin, uncomfortably like a first sip of wine or a first kiss. The sun glows down, seducing the green from slumber, like a dance from Baubo. The snow, on it's way down to the roots, turns an ugly shade of slop, sticking angrily to our pants and boots, as if to stamp her adolescent complaint on our day. The ground melts and freezes, melts and freezes, obeying the shapeshifting weather. Mother in her round power soothes her belly with bird songs and wintergreen leaves crushed under paws. She breathes up the birch sap with each contraction, giving flow to life and anesthesia to winter's sting. She sings up a grand Menarche in each Maple trunk, and releases the snowdrop munchkins from hiding. She hums the bears awake and cracks the chains of early dusk. Grandmother drum keeps the veil thin while Spring becomes. Welcome.
