In spring’s anteroom

The ice covered driveway has been augmented by puddles of raindrops which will probably freeze overnight. Fortunately, tomorrow is the last day of meteorological winter, so we can see light at the end of a cold, dark, dreary, slippery tunnel and will enjoy the forthcoming light and warmth if we don’t slip, fall, and cripple or kill ourselves before spring thaw ends and the ice is gone.

whose tracks are these?

Photo by J. Harrington

The back yard is full of tracks, probably deer. It looks like someone has been taste testing the forsythia and lilac bushes. Chickadees, nuthatches, woodpeckers, goldfinches and an occasional cardinal visit the feeders. This weather makes for tough conditions since freezing rain used to be rare in the North Country.

Once the snow is gone, the ground defrosts, and the sun comes out from behind a solid cloud bank, I’m going to want to get out and tidy up the place, but I won’t. There’s supposed to be lots of buggy critters living in the leaf piles so the leaves will, for the most part, go untouched until the end of No Mow May. That probably means I’lll have to go fishing more often until June but I’ll try to manage, heh, heh!

Meanwhile, current forecasts include the prospect of three separate one inch snow falls over the next week or ten days. That’s a solid reminder that those meteorologists might serve us better if they adjusted their start of spring until April 1. That would be fitting for several reasons.

Why Is the Color of Snow?

Brenda Shaughnessy - 1970-

Let's ask a poet with no way of knowing.
Someone who can give us an answer,
another duplicity to help double the world.

What kind of poetry is all question, anyway?
Each question leads to an iceburn,
a snownova, a single bed spinning in space.

Poet, Decide! I am lonely with questions.
What is snow? What isn't?
Do you see how it is for me.

Melt yourself to make yourself more clear
for the next observer.
I could barely see you anyway.

A blizzard I understand better,
the secrets of many revealed as one,
becoming another on my only head.

It's true that snow takes on gold from sunset
and red from rearlights. But that's occasional.
What is constant is white,

or is that only sight, a reflection of eyewhites
and light? Because snow reflects only itself,
self upon self upon self,

is a blanket used for smothering, for sleeping.
For not seeing the naked, flawed body.
Concealing it from the lover curious, ever curious!

Who won't stop looking.
White for privacy.
Millions of privacies to bless us with snow.

Don't we melt it?
Aren't we human dark with sugar hot to melt it?
Anyway, the question—

if a dream is a construction then what
is not a construction? If a bank of snow
is an obstruction, then what is not a bank of snow?

A winter vault of valuable crystals
convertible for use only by a zen
sun laughing at us.

Oh Materialists! Thinking matter matters.
If we dream of snow, of banks and blankets
to keep our treasure safe forever,

what world is made, that made us that we keep
making and making to replace the dreaming at last.
To stop the terrible dreaming.

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