Easter’s moves

The Spring Equinox occurs each year within a very limited timeframe. Easter, however, can move around quite a bit. This year brought us the winter that wasn’t, until Spring, and a very early Easter. Next year (2025), Easter will be three weeks later, on April 20. I doubt any of us have any idea what to expect for weather next winter. We’re also likely to experience a number of surprises, few pleasant, during the political campaigns this year, especially with one candidate who has already attempted to overthrow the results of the election in 2020. Tell me again why he’s permitted to run for an office he’s shown no respect for. Maybe the Rapture will come and claim the bible thumping bible salesman, sometime soon?

Easter Bunny surprised by a spring snow storm

Photo by J. Harrington

The better news is we’re experiencing a slow snow melt. That allows more replenishment of groundwater than if we had a rapid melt and most of the water ran off to ditches, gutters, streams, and rivers. Much of Minnesota has been reclassified (couldn’t figure out if it’s an upgrade or downgrade) from moderate drought to abnormally dry. We still have a way to go, but, for now, we’re headed in a better direction. If you’re not familiar with Erica Gies' Water Always Wins and the Slow Water movement, I suggest you follow the link and at least check them out.

Then, in honor of Easter and spring, I call to your attention the entirely wonderful Spring Is a New Beginning. Each year about this time I remember how good it made me feel to read it to our children. Now that the children are grown, these seem to me like times when we could all use a new beginning.

Ararat

by Mark Doty

Wrapped in gold foil, in the search
and shouting of Easter Sunday,
it was the ball of the princess,
it was Pharoah’s body
sleeping in its golden case.
At the foot of the picket fence,
in grass lank with the morning rain,
it was a Sunday school prize,
silver for second place, gold
for the triumphant little dome
of Ararat, and my sister
took me by the hand and led me
out onto the wide, wet lawn
and showed me to bend into the thick nests
of grass, into the darkest green.
Later I had to give it back,
in exchange for a prize,
though I would rather have kept the egg.
What might have coiled inside it?
Crocuses tight on their clock-springs,
a bird who’d sing himself into an angel
in the highest reaches of the garden,
the morning’s flaming arrow?
Any small thing can save you.
Because the golden egg gleamed
in my basket once, though my childhood
became an immense sheet of darkening water
I was Noah, and I was his ark,
and there were two of every animal inside me.

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