After Van Gogh
Things are growing strange these days,
like Van Gogh’s yellow trees. Oh, do not
be surprised by these yellow immensities,
how out of proportion things in the picture seem.
What you see in a way makes sense:
the enormous, barren trees eclipsing
the unimportant buildings at Arles station,
the people all small, shadow-like, cast
to the side. Perhaps Van Gogh should have
left us out entirely, but then who would
be left to blame for the strange blurring
of the seasons in the forefront, the way
summer bleeds into autumn, the forests
burning deep into the winter, those winters
where the snow piled so high, we were all
nearly buried alive. Soon we’ll vanish,
and no picture will even exist—unless,
unless someone will answer (who will dare
to answer), where in the world is spring?
~Jodi Hollander “Avenue of Plane Trees”

Who might dare to answer:
where in the world is spring?

Who can know with any certainty?
Sometimes it feels like time skips forward
and a whole season is left behind.

The signs of the seasons might blur so there is no telling
whether it is fall or spring without a calendar.

Are those trees just leafing out or simply trying to shed?
Is the sunset’s golden glow from an early October light or April?

I can’t feel the movement of the earth under my feet.
It needs to slow its spin on its axis
and lengthen its orbital oval trip around the sun
so I have more minutes in the day and more weeks in a year.

But, of course, that would make a huge mess of things.
It is a good thing I’m not the design engineer.

It is as it is,
and meant to be this way.

Though it may be blurry to me,
it is clear and good and intentional to God.
So He dares to answer where in the world is spring?
Only He knows precisely where we are in the heavens…