The Seasons at Great Meadows Wildlife Refuge Poem by Michael Estabrook

The Seasons at Great Meadows Wildlife Refuge

Summer

rotted tree stumps,

splaying bright green ferns,

and skunk cabbage

and rich thick dark mud,

like a chocolate milkshake

Autumn
Raining pine needles

and leaves,

and the earth

is soft and

brown beneath my feet.

Canadian geese

honk melodiously overhead.

Winter

Frozen fields dusted with snow,

frozen ponds surrounded by trees

stiff as rusted robots,

clouds are fuzzy cracks in the sky

letting out the blue.

Spring
I notice these great giant bluish fish

in the shallows, splashing and bumping

into the dried, cracked reeds, but I’m thinking again

of Christine my first girlfriend so many years ago,

remembering so clearly her dirty blonde hair,

her green eyes like dragonflies,

her soft pink lips unsoiled yet by the rigors

and toil and injustices of life.