Spring is where you find it #phenology

Once in awhile, a bit of unexpectedly delightful news arrives and it defies all logic. We enjoy such a tidbit this morning. The following appeared in our Twitter (@JohnHthePoet) timeline.

Aspen flowers? Pussy willows? Grand Rapids? Here's a picture of where the USA National Phenology Network says Spring is to be found as of today. It's early in the Southwest and late in the Southeast. Since Minnesota is about midway between those two areas, maybe it will arrive here as usual, whatever that means. Spring in our neck of the woods is elusive, contrary, shy, the very essence of ephemeral and vernal. It's also resilient and robust, or at least the creatures that contribute to the arrival of Spring are.

We also noted today a report that a small frog is out and about at Midewin Tallgrass Prairie, Southwest of Chicago. The message we're getting from these varied reports is that our expectations of an orderly development and progression of Spring from South to North are woefully misplaced. Spring is where you find it. If you've ever read Joseph Heller's Catch-22, you'll probably understand this paraphrase: Mother Nature can do whatever we can't keep her from doing. Now we're going looking for some local pussy willows, even though we're quite a ways South of Grand Rapids.

A Spring Song

By Donald Davie

    “stooped to truth and moralized his song”

Spring pricks a little. I get out the maps.

Time to demoralize my song, high time.

Vernal a little. Primavera. First

Green, first truth and last.

High time, high time.

A high old time we had of it last summer?

I overstate. But getting out the maps…

Look! Up the valley of the Brenne,

Louise de la Vallière… Syntax collapses.

High time for that, high time.

To Château-Renault, the tannery town whose marquis

Rooke and James Butler whipped in Vigo Bay

Or so the song says, an amoral song

Like Ronsard’s where we go today

Perhaps, perhaps tomorrow.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and… Get well!

Philip’s black-sailed familiar, avaunt

Or some word as ridiculous, the whole

Diction kit begins to fall apart.

High time it did, high time.

High time and a long time yet, my love!

Get out that blessed map.

Ageing, you take your glasses off to read it.

Stooping to truth, we potter to Montoire.

High time, my love. High time and a long time yet.

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