As Winter's cold fist unclenches

This morning we briefly glimpsed the East end of a West bound deer. A couple of days ago we drove past two tom turkeys as they walked from the roadside ditch into the woods. Today, the Better Half [BH] told us she heard the black-capped chickadee's Spring song -- fee-bee. Early next week we should/could see some melting. Yesterday, for the first time in months, we saw puddles on the road. The sun's strength has again reached a point where it can warm the black-topped roadway to a temperature that melts some of the snow and ice covering. Even our own Eeyore-ish gloom and doom attitude and perspective is beginning to brighten and, we can see the end of February from here.

bare-branched chickadee

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning we baked a loaf od artisan sourdough bread with a dash of kernza. It makes the house smell wonderful while baking and tastes great with late Winter / early Spring's mix of soups and stews. Tomorrow the BH is making her delicious french onion soup and we'll enjoy "fresh" bread to sop up the dregs in the soup bowls.

February whitetail

Photo by J. Harrington

Soon we hope to be able to safely retire our YakTrax until next winter and trade our winter parka for a spring rain jacket and sweater. We've almost, but not quite, made it through another winter. We bet that's also what the folks in Texas thought last week and those out East were hoping was true a few days ago. Please repeat after us "dumping greenhouse gases into our atmosphere has already lead to climate weirding."

Horoscope

Maureen N. McLane

Again the white blanket 			
icicles pierce.
The fierce teeth
of steel-framed snowshoes
bite the trail open.
Where the hardwoods stand
and rarely bend
the wind blows hard
an explosion of snow
like flour dusting
the baker in a shop
long since shuttered.
In this our post-shame century
we will reclaim
the old nouns
unembarrassed. 
If it rains 
we'll say oh
there's rain.
If she falls
out of love
with you you'll carry
your love on a gold plate
to the forest and bury it
in the Indian graveyard.
Pioneers do not
only despoil.
The sweet knees
of oxen have pressed
a path for me.
A lone chickadee
undaunted thing
sings in the snow.			 
Flakes appear
as if out of air
but surely they come
from somewhere
bearing what news
from the troposphere.
The sky's shifted
and Capricorns abandon
themselves to a Sagittarian
line. I like
this weird axis.
In 23,000 years
it will become again
the same sky
the Babylonians scanned.

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