Springishnenss

Banks of ice pile up along fast-flowing freshets of frigid melt water. Early on they took the form of fancy fans, frozen flat above silently gushing streams, but with the sun comes strength. The water undermines and smashes them, then piles them up for later melting. By mid-afternoon all evidence of their existence will be gone, only to form flat fans again as night comes down.

This is a season for getting up early. In the almost-morning, before the sun began its carving and cutting of lingering snow, the moon tangled itself in the branches of a straggling spruce, pulled free then sailed off toward the silvery horizon.

As early as then the chickadees and cardinal were calling, and not long later the white-breasted nuthatch tuned up with a sound as jungle-like as Tarzan. It is teetering on the edge of migrant time;Alan saw a robin and a bluebird yesterday on Corbin Hill Road, and geese are gathering in dozens, hundreds, soon-to-be thousands. They stop in all the un-gathered corn fields to glean and gobble before heading on for the tundra...or for the banks of the Mohawk, depending. I can't wait until the river thaws enough for them to sleep in the cove across from the house at night. They giggle and whisper all night like a lullaby in wild-part time and my sleep is smoothed by dreams of flying.


And it is good to see the sun.