Portents

 

In a gloomy mood, I grumble that March is a winter month, and sometimes the weather bears me out.  As I tap the keyboard, I can see bare trees and brown grass. Most of the snow has melted, but there doesn’t seem much change from the way things looked in January.

I’d been doing my walking in the supermarket for weeks to avoid icy blasts and treacherous footing.  I liked to get there early so I could move briskly past the produce, up by the deli counter and along by the fish and meat. Unobstructed by shopping carts, I moved at a snappy pace with the bread on my right and the butter on my left, and strode past the checkout counters and the customer service desk to the produce where I started again.  Seven times around made a mile. 

But Friday I took my first outdoor walk in a long time and was rewarded by the sight of a clump of crocuses in a sunny yard. They were tightly furled against the cold, but definitely in bloom.  There was also a stand of snowdrops.  Neither of these were spectacular.  At the florist area of the supermarket I gave orchids a sideways glance, but the virtue of the crocus is that it stirs to changes humans barely notice and bravely blossoms when needed most.  It is a sign of spring. 

As such it warms the heart the way an orchid never can.  It reassures us that the world is changing for the better. In the low wetlands the green and purple horns of the skunk cabbage must be protruding through the muck.  I must go and see.