All winter, the earth was sealed 

by a lid of frost, like the layer 

of paraffin over the apple jelly, 

or the white disk of chicken fat 

on soup left to cool, but now, 

in cold tin sheds with dripping roofs, 

old tractors warm their engines, 

burning the feathery mouse nests 

from red exhausts, rattling the jars 

 of cotter pins, shaking gaskets 

on nails and stirring the dirty rags 

of cobwebs. 

— from “A Morning in Early Spring” by Ted  Kooser.