and we waited for spring to make its entrance

This winter took all the repeats. 

April felt like a recapitulation of March, 

a leitmotif of snow running through the forecast, 

sometimes the deceptive cadence 

of a seventy degree day. 

In April, we listened to robins 

singing in the wake of the storm, 

a fugue of chromatic juncos, 

and we waited for spring to make its entrance, 

for the last measure of snow, 

the first note of green in the trees, 

buds blaring open like trombones 

in the fourth movement of a Brahms symphony. 

It seemed like spring would never come, 

and then it came. Winter's white tune 

is taken up by the wild plum, 

and the trees have changed 

their key from gray to golden-green. 

The snow has taught us not to say 

this is the end, but on a day 

like today we know we've begun 

the season's brief modulation into summer. 

 [Rob Hardy, ‘Coda’, from Shelter in Place]