Ephemeral Certainty

  

 

A Light exists in Spring

Not present on the Year

At any other period —

When March is scarcely here

 

A Color stands abroad

On Solitary Fields

That Science cannot overtake

But Human Nature feels.

 

It waits upon the Lawn,

It shows the furthest Tree

Upon the furthest Slope you know

It almost speaks to you.

 

Then as Horizons step

Or Noons report away

Without the Formula of sound

It passes and we stay —

 

A quality of loss

Affecting our Content

As Trade had suddenly encroached

Upon a Sacrament.

EMILY DICKINSON

 

  The Osprey pair came back last week. There's no 

mistaking that high pitched, mournful cry as they soar overhead. 

I forget about that sound over the winter, since they migrate south together. But I instantly recognize those long whistles as they return early each spring to the site of last year's nest in order to make a new one for this year. 

 I know about Ospreys, because this pair of birds has been nesting on the next door neighbor's broken boat lift for the past few years. They didn't bother anyone, and no one bothered them. I watched them construct their big messy nest, take turns incubating their eggs, fish and feed the young hatchlings and finally send the whole family for a spin overhead.

 The problem for these birds is that their former nesting site had been ripped down, 

covered with spiked caps, and replaced with a boat.  

After a few days of circling overhead, they seemed to have

 solved that minor problem with ease. They just began to build their usual nest on the T Top of the boat instead. 

 

What else would one expect them to do?

       It is still foggy, cool and gray here, but other signs of spring are beginning to flash.

                                 

    

    It is not at all obvious. But maybe, as the poet says, you can feel it. Look closely.

     Of course I look more to the plants.

 The early bud swell, the soft, often hairy fingers of leaves,

the grasp relaxing around flower buds is slow and sensual.  

The unveiling is provocative. The anticipation builds.

 Yet as slow as it is, as she says, it is changed- gone- in a relative instant.

That magnificently folded plant flesh will soon be

 a full, open, elegant structure.

        

The clouds of yellow pine pollen are not so

 subtle, well known signs of spring. Yet that pollen seems to sneak up on us every year.

 

         And sticks to everything...

                

             including water.

 It will happen this way year after year, without need of a calendar

reminder. If I am lucky, I can enjoy the light of those early, 

deliberate moments all over again.

 

If I am luckier still, I will feel it first.

"She turned to the sunlight and shook her head,

and whispered to her neighbor: 'Winter is dead.”

 

A.A. Milne     "When We Were Very Young"