The mud that was the yard a month ago
has cracked into crosshatch seams
wide enough for a man’s finger to fit
in the ground in the lawn south of the house.

To look at just the dirt this early in the season
before Bermuda and crabgrass have started to grow
gives reason to think April looks more like August.
That takes a very narrow focus, though.

The opening buds of iris blooms
and the rich green of fescue in the neighbor’s yard,
and the three nights in a row near or below freezing
just a few days ago, make it hard to think this is summer.

No, it’s just been an unusually dry April, I reckon.
And the National Weather Service is reckoning
that we’ll likely have some heavy rains today
right here in south central Kansas.

The colors shifting our way on the radar map
and the way the rumbling thunder
rattles the windows in the house
make me suspect they may be right.

Although the showers and thunderstorms
will bring a hiatus to my siding-the-house project,
they will definitely help the scraggly little blueberry bush
I just reset in a dry corner of the yard.

God has a way of bringing to each day
and each season
a reminder of the ways and reasons
that patient faith is often rewarded.

And though our plans seem sometimes thwarted,
and we don’t finish on schedule everything we started,
we may find from time to time as life still flowers
that a Better Plan was formed in a Greater Mind than ours.

H. Arnett
4/22/20