melt/freeze/thaw/bloom

Rideau Falls, after the annual NCC river blasting

Spring. Calendar may not say so, but I know it’s spring. The birds, long silent in the deep of winter, are twitterpated and filling the air with their chorus.

March has come in like a lion, so they say. It has wrought havoc in some places, near and far, nature behaving as it does with reckless abandon. More southern parts of the province are already seeing the progeny of buried bulbs unfurling from the sodden earth. The ground where I stand is yet knee-deep with snow, but here and there are puddles, the odd blade of dried grass from last fall poking through. Still feels like winter, but the sun is a bit warmer than yesterday, so I can’t complain.

Even the crows are a jovial lot today, cawing their heads off and careening on stiff winds that lift them from as-yet dormant trees. Trees deep in dreams of summer. Somewhere under all their weather-worn bark and scars of the seasons, the flesh beneath is green, the sap running like blood through wooden veins.

I am not the first to write about the coming of spring. Poets and authors and far greater beings than I have wielded their pens to herald the change of seasons. But in these first few tentative days, when you know winter is, at last, coming to an end, the hibernating soul wakes from its slumber and the font of creation starts burbling again.

renew/revive/restore/rejoice