How Many Springs?

 

I am of the age when I have begun to wonder 

how many years might be left to me, 

particularly, how many springs will I yet live

to experience.

How many more seasons to savor the beauty of 

redbuds softening the forest edges, 

or to smile at the hilltops, clothed in their pale green furriness 

that lasts only a few days?

How many more April hikes up the mountain where I strain to

distinguish pine warblers from juncos by their calls, or

early mornings of jumping out of bed to welcome

the first warblers of the spring migration, 

or to marvel at the zillions of tiny toad tadpoles

hatching in the pond?
How many more years to watch the spicebush's early color

wash through the woodlands, or

the red maple flowers blazing crimson across the landscape,

or the subdued trailing tassels of the oaks,

or the olive haze of new leaves on the
creek-side stand of sycamores?

How many more days will I delight in the fragrance of lilacs 
and apple blossoms and 
wild mint in the empty fields, 
of newly mown grass,
or the scent of a soft spring rain?

How many more opportunities to stroke the 
pussy willow's fuzzy buds,

or the hazelnuts' dangling catkins,

or to reverently reach out to the one trout lily flower

amid the sweeping colony of leaves?

How many more springtime walks to suddenly stand still,

and wonder at the exuberant song of the ruby-crowned kinglet,

who has just broken into my melancholy musings?
And how many more times will the catbird's song,

or the peeper's call,

or the newly noticed bank of rue anemone

call me back from such pensive questioning into

the moment, 

this moment,

the only moment of the only spring

I am sure to witness,

to hug to myself in unrestrained gladness

and gratitude.