March -- go fly a kite

Have you been kite flying yet this March? Even thinking about it helps offset our all too frequent return to cloudy skies. Colors and tails brighten dreary skies almost as much as returning flocks of red-winged blackbirds, sandhill cranes or waterfowl drakes in breeding colors. As an ancillary benefit, soaring kites lift our thoughts from muddy roads and fields.

a kite over the St. Croix (Wisconsin trees in background)

Photo by J. Harrington

Amy Lowell's poem is an all too accurate portrait of how we usually experience March (and sometimes April) in the North Country. Watching birds return, even if only to pass through for some, flying long-tailed, colorful kites, plus later seeking Easter rabbits and pastel eggs are worthy antidotes to muddy March madness.

March Evening

Amy Lowell

Blue through the window burns the twilight;
  Heavy, through trees, blows the warm south wind.
Glistening, against the chill, gray sky light,
  Wet, black branches are barred and entwined.

Sodden and spongy, the scarce-green grass plot
  Dents into pools where a foot has been.
Puddles lie spilt in the road a mass, not
  Of water, but steel, with its cold, hard sheen.

Faint fades the fire on the hearth, its embers
  Scattering wide at a stronger gust.
Above, the old weathercock groans, but remembers
  Creaking, to turn, in its centuried rust.

Dying, forlorn, in dreary sorrow,
  Wrapping the mists round her withering form,
Day sinks down; and in darkness to-morrow
  Travails to birth in the womb of the storm.

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