Warming Winters

mushrooms sprout in a drizzling winter that should be under snow; February, 2024

Daily Note

Every day, a photograph, a poem.

It’s been weeks since the sun shone; only one day out of weeks. Today was the same: a drizzling rain all day. On my walk with Guthrie, I found new mushrooms sprouting up in the amazing forest of verdant mosses. Mushrooms are a good thing: they decompose what’s dying beneath the soil and transform it into nutrients for the growing things around it. Of course, balance is needed.

But instead of this tiny world of green, February should be a land blanketed in white: snow and ice across the land. The world is warming, and with this amazing and beautiful green world I see now in the semi-arid shrub-steppe, I worry about what’s ahead for summer; if it’s this warm now, what will summer bring?

And so, a poem…

Poetry

Warming Winters

In a warming winter climate
when the snow barely falls,
drizzling rain drenches the dirt,
and the usual winter white reverts
to a tiny forest of mossy greens
with a burst in leaves of grass,
fungi sprout in the deep dampness
to transform the old for new sustenance;
a tiny world from drizzled raindrops
grows lush and verdant beneath our feet
to last through spring when warmth grows hot
and dries all to crumbles in this same spot.
Sheri Edwards
02.10.24 041.365.24
Poetry/Photography