Catskill March melts
Wipes the slate clean of winter’s traces
Hoofprints of foraging deer
Mazes of mouse tunnels
Dematerialize to soggy grass and leaves.
Snow, Ice - it all runs down the mountain.
Rivulets follow old paths to find
The depression called Toad Hollow
Beside an old beaver dam
The water stops to rest there
And reflect the sky and budding trees.
Storms pass and star filled nights
Tiny sprouts of green appear in the still water
Coyotes stop to drink.
But the night of the first warm April rain,
In the woods there is a stirring. A resurrection.
From their winter beds under dead leaves
Buried salamanders push their spotted limbs
Pull their dark segmented bodies
And form an army lurching toward the pond –
Toad Hollow Pond, where each was born.
Scores of them, heedless of predators or traffic
Through sheets of driving rain
Single minded on that single night
Kindled, after months of dark cold isolation
To fall into the water and join the bacchanal
Rapture called Liebesspiel
Next morning the revelers are gone
Egg clusters strung like party lanterns in the water
Warm days will see them change
Strange new beings emerge with fern like gills
Then legs to carry them out of the shrinking pond
And under the forest floor.
The leaves that will be their winter blanket
Still dance on the trees
As green grasses, moss and wildflowers
Fill Toad Hollow
And mist rises up the mountain.
- Lisa Kole
Lisa Kole is an emerging poet, painter, licensed wildlife rehabilitator and wildlife advocate. She lives at the edge of the Wild Sundown Forest in the Catskill Mountains.
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