Spring Chores

set out lettuce
fingering tiny roots
careful hands press
tender upright leaves shine

the soil is fresh and cold

limed the pastures
spreader singing flinging
bag after bag onto shoots
of early greening grass

afterwards a light rain fell

pruned the apples
relieving old trees of heavy tops
fondled new twigs their
tight buds hiding naked pink

late frost has a killing touch

watched the vet as he stroked
my weak scared sheep
his gentle healer’s hands pulled
back her fleece buried the needle

I buried her

Lynn McLure lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina. She raises sheep for fleece to use for hand spinning yarn, which she hand paints for weaving and knitting. She writes and teaches Japanese poetry forms, and her haiku and haibun have been published in a number of haiku journals. She has received awards for Best Unpublished Haibun as well as second place and honorable mention from the American Haiku Society. She has won the Lyman award for best haiku, second place and several honorable mentions from the NC Poetry Society. Her work has appeared in several anthologies as well as one textbook. She has also been published in The Asheville Poetry Review and The Great Smokies Review. In addition to poetry, Lynn is a painter and textile artist and maker of handmade books.

About Spring Chores—I live and farm in the mountain landscape of the Black Mountains and in the shadow of the Roan. I experience a daily intimacy with the land and the animals, wild and domestic, that fills my days. My poems rise out of this relationship.