Thursday, March 30, 2023

The music of Spring

Will the temperatures stay warm enough locally that we’ll get all rain; mostly rain with some snow; rain, snow, and freezing rain; and how many inches of snow tomorrow night? That is the question making us more pensive than usual over the next thirty-six to forty-eight hours. When all is said and done, come Palm Sunday, April 2, will we have gained (bare) ground or lost to increased snow cover? Will the roads become icy or not? The answer, as with so many things these days, is “It depends.” 

In our part of the North Country, April is the month we experience Winter into Spring. George Winston has a wonderful album by that title. If you’re tired of a winter that won’t remove her bony, ice-cold fingers from our throats, follow the link above. Then listen. Do it even if you’re not fed up with winter. It’s beautiful music and I believe we all need more beauty in our lives. In fact, I believe we’d all be better off if entrepreneurs put as much  effort and as many resources into increasing the beauty in the world as they do into growing Artificial Intelligence. Then again, I doubt there’s such a thing as Artificial Beauty, right?

Canada geese calling: Spring music
Canada geese calling: Spring music
Photo by J. Harrington

Even for those of us who have grown increasingly impatient with winter’s leave taking lasting even longer than Minnesotans saying good-by at the end of an evening visit, there’s a beauty in the inevitability of longer days eventually becoming warmer days which will arrive in a foreseeable future.

After I’ve posted today’s blog musings, I think I’ll dig out and play a Beatles’ song that’s also appropriate for this time of year, although I admit I am partial to the Richie Havens’ version of Here Comes the Sun. And then I think I’ll follow that with Simon and Garfunkle’s April Come She Will. This music should help me ignore the snow that’s just started falling outside and is expected to continue for several hours. Maybe it will even help me repress the screams I feel building inside.


Spring Storm

 - 1883-1963


The sky has given over 
its bitterness. 
Out of the dark change 
all day long 
rain falls and falls 
as if it would never end. 
Still the snow keeps 
its hold on the ground. 
But water, water 
from a thousand runnels! 
It collects swiftly, 
dappled with black 
cuts a way for itself 
through green ice in the gutters. 
Drop after drop it falls 
from the withered grass-stems 
of the overhanging embankment.


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