Spring

It’s still cool here, the temperature’s in the fifties, which is balmy for winter but rather chilly and spinsterish for spring. I’ve been wearing my jacket this afternoon, doing errands. Still, there are hints that things are on the move: the earth in the borders has darkened, it’s no longer the still dead grey of winter, but a richer brown, though it’s blank and empty. At the heart of the dead grey waterfall of the sprawling nepeta there are tiny pale heads, thrusting themselves upwards. And the lawn: the lawn has made a bold and sweeping declaration: emerald.
But it’s still chilly, and I’ve not yet been tempted to roll up my sleeves and start messing around in the garden, pruning things too early and stepping on new peony roots as I try to see if they’re there: it’s still too cold.
There are other ways, though, that the message is being delivered.
Tonight I went out running in the dark, along the dirt road and through the high bare trees, that moved faintly and mysteriously, though there was no wind. The air was sharp and fresh and damp. When I turned up Mt. Holly Road and went over the swampy part, coming over the bridge, it swept over me suddenly and for a moment I closed my eyes: peepers.
The whole hollow swelled with that high eerie hallelujah. I ran through it, feeling it shrilling around me in the darkness, lifting us all toward spring in a wild exalting rush.
And when I got home, still elated, and back to our barn driveway, beyond the sound of the chorus, I opened the gate and stepped into the pasture, and into another of spring’s announcements: the dense, heady, opulent perfume of skunk: wide awake, sociable, and very nearby.
Then I stopped, and took a long, ecstatic breath. I couldn’t get enough: it’s here.