Rivalries of Spring

WORD PROMPT: For everything there is a time and season.

Today, I'm just a teeny bit annoyed that no one ever discusses the evolution of Spring the way it really is. Can’t anyone get the story right about the line-ups, the waiting, the cancellations, and unexpected delays?

All those poets and bards and dizzy dreamers press on us the premeditation that seasons transition as quickly as Clark Kent in a phone booth. That with the arrival of the scheduled date, the authority of Winter is ousted that self-same morning and Spring fully inducted and sworn in before the dinner bell. ‘False! Falsehood,’ I cry. ‘It just ain’t so!’

Winter is not so easily defeated and other sovereignty established. The conversion is slow and shaky. Winter remains at the ready sojourning into April, May, and even June with a small group meant to threaten and intimidate with rowdy comrades who were previously in positions of authority —ice rain, snow, frost, fog, sleet, and blizzard winds.

And so, it takes ‘long-time’ for the snow to sluice away. And when bare patches of grass are finally revealed, here comes another big git of snow. So, truth is, though the solstice be past, Winter again reaches for the sparkling ice-crystal Scepter of its rule.

And no, you silly bards of rhyme without reason, trees don’t simply bud and grass green. There are birthing pains involved. There is the messy business of all that afterbirth. All that dirty mix of dead grass and crusty snow and dog poopies revealed. And the nastiness of icy ponds at the corner of the house where they have no right to be and where I skid and fall like a ton of bricks.

And the gravel road, now bare, jokingly mimics hard solid smooth pavement for a couple of weeks but when the perma-frost retreats, the bottom falls out and now it is a greasy, soggy, slushy bog that ‘clums’ to tires with the sure strength and adhesiveness of Velcro.

Sun flames are weak and far too frequently I hear those old Winter winds whistling at Spring in a non-complementary way between narrow gaps of stiff skeletal finger-branches. In a way that tweeds the sound into an awful shriek rather than a sweet come-hither call. Winter is such a villain with its everlasting games of animosity. It runs interference for way too long. Until the coming of Spring looks as hopeless as it does on this, yet another, gloomy snowy day.

It is difficult for me to remain convinced that what is supposed to happen will happen. That the shrieking wind will eventually be replaced by the soft cooing-rustle of infant leaves as they weakly push and kick aside swaddling wraps with the sounds akin to the opening of a tissue-wrapped gift.

The gift of Spring. With ‘Belated Wishes’.

Nevertheless, I hope it comes soon because if Summer and Spring come together, we’ll just have more prodding, pushing, shoving, and carrying on that will create weakness in the system. Enough weakness for Winter to storm in again some time in mid-May with a impressive snow storm and then in mid-summer with an unimpressive killer frost.

I CAN deal with Winter in its own time and season, but man I hate the way it sneaks around and crashes my Spring and Summer parties.