Climate change is upending nature’s timing, bringing early melt
to the snows that propel summer wildflower seasons and rearranging
life in unpredictable ways.
––Craig Welch, “Seasons Out of Sync,” National Geographic, April 2023.

My mother always said you could count on
spring to be spring after hefty winter snow.
Then, on cue, June’s humidity slid in
and summer invited us to crawl down
the Garden State for relief at the Jersey shore
until autumn arrived and school kids drilled math
up and down rigid rows where nuns praised
the virtues of memorizing everything.

But now, snow has forgotten when to melt
and glacier lilies bloom too soon, confusing
hummingbirds arriving from Mexico.
Not to mention, millions of murres missing
feeding grounds in warming West Coast waves
or snapping shrimp losing their percussive beat.
Every living thing is scrambling to memorize
seasons that won’t stand still.

I’m relieved my mother crosscut this futility
by clocking out in sync with her own timeline,
believing snow would melt before pansies
and bleeding hearts announced an on-time spring.