Here in New England, the month of watchful waiting has arrived. As the lengthening days lean toward the equinox, our eyes scan the ground for shoots of green and sweep the sky for the flash and swell of bird and bud. Yet, this March also marks for most of us one year since the COVID-19 pandemic first upended our lives.

And, so, as we watch and wait for spring, we, also, hold our breath - awaiting a thaw that is at once literal and metaphorical.

Forecast: Thaw

By Jeanne LeBaron Sawyer

Dark yields to dawn,

and the poplar, each bud tipped

with last night’s frozen rain,

stands gaunt and still.

No branch is stirring as light grows

and birds come, leading gray morning

on to blue day. Mist hovers between cold snow

and faster-warming air. Even the birds

are silent, listening, waiting.

I know the silence, too,

waiting for warming sunshine

and for you.

Jeanne LeBaron Sawyer, 1927-2018, was a librarian, poet, and amateur naturalist. She began writing poetry in high school in Brockton, Massachusetts, and wrote her way through New York, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Maine. Even in the last years of her life she continued revising poems for her first book, Evolution: Poems across Seven Decades, which was published in 2017 by Heron Pond Press, and is available through heronpondpress@gmail.com.