Still there’s a slice of ice encasing the marsh as glass; stiff, sharp becomes a screen protecting you from prey. Visions of rich, dense duck weed and brown, earthy tuffs of marsh grass huddle waiting for cloudless sky. But morning chill tells another story of early spring.
Buried deep you rest. With scent of spring playing games of hide and seek; you find no aroma of wild rose only unscented seeds from brown, barefaced bundled of reeds and cat-tails spinning, dancing atop silvery layer of ice; your roof-top sky light. Your throaty call echoes beneath; stiff in the icy entrapment.
Yet, this is your woodland nest here life and death linger in stiff pools of decaying waters rich with microscopic bacteria; so minuscule even your bulgy protruding eyes unable to find them. Your passion overriding all, your mission drives you forward as your need to seek a mate becomes all; this is why you were created and it consumes your very existence.
A warning, when the ice melts cranes and geese are waiting to have you as a tasty meal. Sing quickly, call out rhythmic chips, chatter and chants; for somewhere she waits past all still danger to dance awhile as it has been written in the book of “Spring Peepers Logs of Love”; for now the image in ice is only you!
These all wait for You, That You may give them their food in due season.You give them they gather in; You open Your hand, they are filled with good. You hide Your face, they are troubled; You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.
Patti Wolf 