Eternal Spring
penned by Leigh Bryan
The Maiden had always loved springtime the best—
when little rivers swelled with icy mouthfuls of melting snow,
their happy gurgles echoed by the cheerful trills of newborn chicks.
Wandering the warming forest, she watches closely
as the spruce trees sprout lemony, light green tips,
feather-soft to the touch—a delicious addition to oatmeal.
Now, when she stoops near the sparkling crystalline pools
speckling the forest floor, they reflect fine lines
framing her gently curved mouth.
And when she comes to her stretch of fields,
sloughing off their winter browns and greys,
she recalls when all she felt in her veins was springtime’s pulse,
when it only meant newness that, like her brown locks,
would never fade.
“Doesn’t springtime seem more beautiful,
now that you know all things end,”
whispers the earth.
And the Maiden wishes this were true,
wants to embrace the richness of her experience—
of courting loss, of smelling the glistening mineral sulfur
of the Underworld’s great halls,
of knowing intimately the mushrooms
pushing their caps through the earth,
of the fragrant, rotting leaves that feed
the fresh green sprouts
after winter’s long-awaited end.
The maiden sighs, unlacing her boots
near the cordgrass of a quiet pond.
Clinging, still, to the last of winter’s chill,
she circles her toes in the icy creek.
When her eye’s corner catches
a golden slice of sunlight
angling through the trees, she gasps,
noticing each shimmering splinter of gold
blanketing the pond.
It isn’t this light that tugs a smile
across the maiden’s lips, as she lifts
her hands to her swelling belly.
It’s the memory of awe that shines down,
reminds her of now, reminds her of truth.
“Springtime is eternal, little one,”
she whispers and hopes
the winters in which he forgets himself
are fleeting.
Leigh Bryan grew up in rural Florida, where her Aquarian mother instilled in her a curiosity of and appreciation for herbal medicine, diverse cultures and religions, and cooking. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and her poems have appeared in publications local to the Tampa Bay area.