April 22, 2016 – Sunshine Lane

On Sunday this week,
this yard was covered in snow,
and today,
it’s covered in gold.

The seasons,
they fly by,
as we grow old,
and yet there are still
days ahead with
surprises untold.

When I was a child,
I recall streets filled
with trash,
and rivers with sludge,
the skies were often
the color of fudge.

We have a long way to go,
there’s no doubt about it,
but we’re way ahead,
toward reaching our goal.

“What is our goal?”
you might sincerely ask.
It’s to offer our grandkids,
and their’s and still more,
yards filled with white snow,
and then the same week,
with dandelions gold.

It’s earth day, of course, or the tail end of it, and today’s suggestion was to write something in connection with that. The idea for this poem came to me this morning when I passed yard after yard filled with beautiful, yes beautiful, golden dandelions and earlier in the week they had been filled with snow. The Colorado Rocky Mountain ecosystem and weather patterns in spring time are often just that chaotic and unpredictable. All of the trees have finally bloomed out here and the tulips have come up and yet, it snowed, and they all survived! I do believe we have come a long way in protecting Mother Earth, but we have a long way to go yet. We all leave too big of a damaging footprint behind when we die. I think our goal in life should be “pack in, pack out.” In other words, to leave the world as good, if not better, as the day we entered it.