A Veer to the Left

When I looked, I knew I might never again see so much of the earth so beautiful, the beautiful being something you know added to something you see, in a whole that is different from the sum of its parts…what I knew was that the earth underneath was alive and that by tomorrow, certainly by the day after, it would be all green again.  ~Norman Maclean~ 

I don’t have expectations of green by tomorrow or the day after. It’s too early. Then again, much like the image in this post, it feels near. Just a walk across the road or a veer to the left.

With a bouncy spring forward, this weekend has seen a change beyond daylight saving time, beyond temperatures that climbed into the 40’s and are predicted to stay there the entire week. We are on the advent of a welcomed season.

I felt it in the pool on Saturday as the sun blared through the windows and warmed long, rectangular stripes across the aqua-tinged water. It was a spring warmth, not the breath of winter’s cold. I witnessed Gibbs the cat running out onto the patio, back inside, outside again, inside…tail in the air, childish garbles coming from the depths of his lungs. He felt it too.

I heard it in the ever-increasing chirp of birds outside an open patio door, in the distant sound of a motorcycle, and the voices of children playing outside without mittens on their hands and scarves wrapped tightly around their mouths. The advent was clear in the sound and revived aura of the wind as it rushes through an open window of a car traveling down city streets lined with dirty remnants of that horrid white stuff.

I noticed it in the puddles that formed from the melt of snow and the expectant smile on the face of the humans who know the time is near. I spotted it at Fleet Farm, where the lawn and garden section is in formation – seeds, bags of dirt, patio furniture – while I had visions of potted flowers dancing in my head. The wheat-colored grass waved from across the field, a wave of goodbye for it knows its color will change in the weeks of late March and the month of April. In spring.

I felt it, heard it, saw it with my two own eyes.

It’s not officially here yet, but it’s near.

Earth alive.

Just a veer to the left.