Spring in Kansas.
It doesn’t come in softly.
It roars in with the wind and rain beating against a steel roof, washing into the old soddies and stone,
Clearing out winter in one giant breath.
The change comes within a week,
From dry dead, brown, to startling green, an emerald landscape of winter wheat.
The emerald isle has nothing on Kansas in the Spring.
Then the color starts, red buds against glorious green fields
and thunderous skies, a painters dream uncaptured.
And forsythia, the first blooms, beautiful and stark.
Crocus, daffodil and dandelion crowning the ground with gold.
The trees, bare of leaves, burst forth with flowers in shades of white and pink and the magnolias burst forth, ready to fly off the tree.
Our mighty cotton wood, drooping with frills that will become light catching tufts in the early summer sun as the leaves murmur their constant song, piling like snow in the heated streets.
Thunder rolls as lightning strike turning day into night with hail filled clouds and twisters striking like Greek gods, angry and awesome.
Creeks flood and clear the way for tadpoles and crawdads in streams and pools.
Spring comes, the earth warms, we all wake and stretch and wait for the sunflowers to do the same, yearning to the summer sun.
This poem is meant for a series on life in Kansas that I'm working on.