Feeling It

Hey the winter is over, storm or no storm. That old snowpack is beginning to look like the dough the pizza-man tosses over his head so as to fill it with air.Look at these winds, that are now so strong. Out my window I see the large trunk-like limbs of an oak swaying like the branches of a willow.Between the winds and this new strong sun,we're all getting kind of giddy.At the dry cleaners’ the other day, a woman I have never met turned to me as we waited in line. “I know you!” she cried. “You’re the one whose sister sings opera!”I am in fact not the one whose sister sings opera and said so as kindly as I could.“Well anyway, I know I’ve seen you at those summer concerts in the courtyard of the Episcopal Church!”Wrong again, but why say so when this late-winter thaw brings such high spirits?For sure it was high spirits that moved the tiny girl I passed at the town pond to bend over and toss her little skirt clear up over her head, revealing a paradise of ruffles on the seat of her little undies.“Hayley, put your skirt down right now!” cried her mother. “Why would you even DO that?”Silly question, when it seemed to me she did it because the geese were also doing it at the thawing margins of this chilled champagne-bucket of a pond. Down went their heads into the water. Up came their feathered bottoms, as gloriously arrayed as young Hayley’s ruffles.All I know is that something is coming and it isn’t more winter, in spite of today's snow... In spite of the fact that the Great Blizzard of 1888 that brought snow to the sills of the second-story windows began on March 11^th of that year.Even that old oak tree feels it. Day and night now, I watch its great limbs, stirring, stirring the sky like vast wooden spoons.

Cat Detectives

The snow is melting but not fast enough. You still can’t walk up north here we come on weekends. The only melt is around people’s docks where the aqautherm heaters they put in to keep a pool of open water so the docks don’t break up in all the ice.Otherwise: tundra.The cats can’t believe it. They go out on the porch and get no farther. There is no vegetation to sniff, no rich earth to dig in after using it for the purpose the Cat Gods intended.So they come back inside with me and together we climb to the room over the garage, the house’s highest point. In one direction: a gritty driveway. In the other: more tundra.There is however a little balcony off this room too small for more than a single chair in summer.  Both cats are out on it now, noses pointed southward. They lift their chins. They sniff the air. They smell something I am missing. Oh for a nose like a cat and a cat’s eyes too when March has us all stuck in neutral!