To Dream the Impossible Dream

Ever wonder if it’s spring’s choice to grow green grass and all those leaves and flowers?
Or is spring coerced, preferring not to work so hard,
would rather rest under the calming weight of a winter blanket,
snuggled up and dreaming that it could sleep uninterrupted,
winter steering the wheel all the way until summer steps in.
Of all the seasons, spring slaves the hardest.
Spring has to recover the earth after winter coolly kills everything off,
icing all the Sound of Music meadows and dropping leaves and flowers
like a Saint Valentine’s Day trigger man gone exponentially ballistic beyond mere massacre.
The killing is easy compared to having to reanimate everything afterward again.
Even Dr. Frankenstein would grow weary of that work after very many years.
And summer? All summer does is maintain the status quo,
watching over what the spring has sprung,
like a plantation owner, rocking on its front porch,
decked out in a Colonel Sanders white linen suit and black string tie,
sipping mint juleps and fanning itself with its wide-brimmed white felt hat.
Fall? Fall’s an artsy undertaker, preparing the earth for burial,
little touches here and there, cosmetically enhancing the beauty of dead things,
blushing them to rouge flame in their death throes before leaving.
And then winter, the gravedigger who need never lift a spade,
leaning on the long handle, simply letting its ice and snow bury the bodies.
Spring has been slandered for bringing life back,
but you should try it sometime.
Ever attempt to resurrect the dead? It’s no mean feat.
You should be the one responsible for restoring all that flora.
Every year, year in and year out, never complaining,
while dreary poets malign you and die, their work done,
the need to expend any energy at all composing every year departed.
There’s no eternal enslavement penning lines
impugning a reputation or emoting about love or whatever drivel.
Poets luckily come and go; they finally get their rest.
Spring must answer its beckoning bell until the end of time.
It has the hardest job of all the seasons, and that toil is never-ending.
Spring should be allowed a snooze button so it can dream
a few more minutes about retirement and sleeping in,
until the call of nature finally forces it from slumber
to climb back on the rack of perpetual pro bono servitude.