Edrie Corbit, California, USA
I don’t know who needs to hear this
but the willows are in bloom.
A month early.
Their caterpillar buds wriggle up to a cerulean sky.
Five years ago on Imbolc, the fog blotted out
any sign of the sun.
Now, though, the open warmth
beckons early flora
and the upturned faces of fauna,
defrosting.
Of course, an early spring
signals an early summer.
Which signals an early fire season.
But I won’t think about that now,
while it’s still sea glass season,
and my hands can brush over the pebbles
carried by the winter swell,
searching for treasures
to cup and fawn over.
“This climate change is really working for me,”
a woman nearby says as she, too, turns skyward,
cinching her eyes closed against the light,
the sun holding her face with soft fingers,
but also etching it in ways she won’t see for years.
I think how, without the dense fog, I don’t feel so heavy.
I could be the red-winged blackbird
flitting from the ground to the willow tips in two wing beats.
Though, without the fog, the redwoods feel less grounded.
A handful have fallen.
There was that one tourist killed
at Muir Woods
on Christmas Eve
in front of his sister.
But who am I to complain
about the bright light
turning the sea to a diamond mine.
Edrie Corbit’s first deep love as a child was the land. She has been writing letters and songs to it ever since. Her fiction has won the Grand Prize for the San Francisco Writer’s Conference Writing Competition and she currently is working on a climate change novel that features both humor and heart.
