April Fools
Snow on the green grass.
A bright wind riffles through
Puddles in the yard.
No foals in the mare bands yet: easier to move them now
from their winter pasture,
but the hills are white again.
It's still winter-is it?
A flock of bluebirds flashed through two weeks ago,
Their impossible indigo a miracle of color against the desert grays.
Cats and saddle horses sluff a bit of winter hair,
then stand shivering in a north wind.
My foolish daffodils
strain toward a rowdy sky
that will as likely crush them
under a foot of new snow tonight.
Heat lamps on in the shed,
but no little white bodies curl on beds of warm yellow straw.
Not yet.
We cross our fingers,
hoping to shear before the lambs come.
Hank shakes his head, imagining the nightmare:
a hundred babies birthing in the chutes,
wandering lost on wobbling legs
in the milling crowd
of the shearing pens.
Five days. Maybe.
Sheep shearers stuck in Eureka
in the storm,
Another one of April's little jokes.