In the fog, the bare trees look
like they are lightly covered with snow.
This early morning walk in early April
is chilling cold reminding me that spring
is still more of a suggestion today.

I only have to travel a few hours north of home to still find the early morning hours between midnight and sunrise to be more like winter than spring despite what the calendar tells me.
This morning, further north, but still spring,
there were ice crystals on the rocks.
It doesn’t take much change to make
things look different from the recent past.
The future – one or two seasons away?
this mild winter, equinox a line away
on the wall calendar, hurrying snow flurries
that will not stay, friends and family
home safe and healthy on this day,
content in this moment, hopeful future moments.
My poem’s title alludes to the line from Shakespeare’s Richard III, “Now is the winter of our discontent…” and I also think of how John Steinbeck used the line for the title of his The Winter of Our Discontent