Lavendar sky, lit from below with all the shades of pale purple fading into the darkening gray. It's windy and warm, a nice March morning, the clouds pushed around and thinned over time by the wind. Moisture up from the Gulf is supposed to bring rain by tomorrow, but today it's only making soft air and soft blue, the clouds bleached out from this morning to a puffy white. Every day the trees are more and more green; it's amazing that the green comes on so fast once it starts. The maple has some real leaves, and is beginning to create shade already, bad for the grass but nice for everything else, birds and people included.
Something sensuous about the wood of the crepe myrtle, so smooth and golden, it warms up any kind of light that reaches it. I have never seen a tree with a more lovely trunk, and now the little lace of its leaves is spreading out along more branches. The baby magnolia tree is making its spears of yellow green, the only way you can really tell it's a magnolia is that it leafs out the same time as the others in the area, making that same shade of yellow green tinged with brown that darkens into that deep glossy green with the smooth hard edges. It has much thinner leaves, longer and more pointed, than the other magnolias in the area. For the longest time I did not realize what it was, but it's recognizable in the spring along with the others.
Next week is spring break and you can tell it from the students, they are wound up tight and noisy as a flock of crows, and just as in that flock of crows some are a lot louder than others, but they set to work and though they talked and laughed loudly, they were all working on something, cards to trade on Friday, and just experimenting with new things, inch square cards and altering playing cards. They have been really creative in what they are doing, I love seeing them work out their ideas, figuring how to make it look or work the way they want it to. It's the most fun I have, just trying to figure out what they are attempting! They have the exuberance of spring leaves, but are not as silent!
Dear March - come in -
Dear March - Come in -
How glad I am -
I hoped for you before -
Put down your Hat -
You must have walked -
How out of Breath you are -
Dear March, how are you, and the Rest -
Did you leave Nature well -
Oh March, Come right upstairs with me -
I have so much to tell -
I got your Letter, and the Birds -
The Maples never knew that you were coming -
I declare - how Red their Faces grew -
But March, forgive me -
And all those Hills you left for me to Hue -
There was no Purple suitable -
You took it all with you -
Who knocks? That April -
Lock the Door -
I will not be pursued -
He stayed away a Year to call
When I am occupied -
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come
That blame is just as dear as Praise
And Praise as mere as Blame -
Emily Dickinson
This is one of the longest poems I've ready by Dickinson, and I so enjoy it. She includes many of the things I treasure in spring, the maples, the birds, the wind, and the purple light often seen in the early morning this time of year, and in the sunsets as well. And how droll she is telling April he can just stay away because it took him a year to come around, and now she won't be persued <chuckle> How like a lady to want to be unpredictable, and choose her own suitor and her own time.
So March, come along, you have come right into the yard, bringing all your lovely treasures, and air so soft and sweet we could get drunk on it!
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