Reaching joy

Winter is prison. I don't care how beautiful it is, it makes me miserable. I get though it by feeding the birds, growing as many plants as I can fit in my windows, on my benches, anywhere I can put them, and by waiting.....

***do click***

For a day like this one. There is still snow, but it is perfect snow...loose granular is the skiers' term I think. It has a satisfyingly sloppy crunch underfoot. Fun to walk in. It is on its way out too, leaving us apace..... Every step you take will be a bare place tomorrow. Every dark thing has its own Easter basket nest too, melted by absorbing rays from a still hidden sun.





Birds are everywhere...avian surround sound.

There be robins. Maelstroms of geese, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds ringing everywhere. Red winged black birds and grackles, blue jays with cheeks so crammed with sunflower seeds that they look deformed when they fly. Thunderous clapping mourning doves...birds everywhere. One flock of Canadas went by this morning, sailing east down the river. I counted...slowly....very slowly...to thirty seconds worth and they were still coming, punctuated by silver gulls that were caught up in their beating flight path.




Because I was on a hill and they were not so very high over the water I was looking straight across at them and could see their wings throbbing, brown, then grey, then brown again, in flickering unison.


There is water everywhere too, rushing toward the river like it might miss it if it didn't hurry. The horse pasture pond is overflowing. As I sit on the old barrel I set here years ago, I can hear the excess softly burbling across the grass despite the racket from the Intersate. It is so clear that if it weren't for reflected light, you couldn't see it.




Can you see the water below?...



Even though it is still winter you can sense the springing up of outdoor things. It is easy to remember why lambs buck and caper and horses gallop and kick just for the fun of it. I feel downright frisky too.