Winter spring

 

I awoke to snow drifting lazily and steadily past the window. Outside, beyond white, still winter-skeletal poplar and birch branches, the sky matched the colour of the snow almost exactly and for a moment as I first opened my eyes to see this white on white on white world, I thought perhaps I was dreaming.

But somehow this May snowfall seemed perfectly normal, perfectly timed, as though a farewell of sorts to this winter that has stretched it’s cold, pointing fingers into spring.

The snowflakes, fat and gentle and full of whimsy, rested easily on branches, gathering in little clusters, coating the evergreens once again in white, and because the snow has been receding and there have been days that seemed very much like spring, days with strong sunshine and the sound of burbling waters and the smell of wet earth and fresh buds and melting snow, it all seemed very dreamlike, even as I stumbled down the stairs to the kitchen.

It is not unexpected, this snow that falls throughout the morning, at one point sounding like rain on the roof, it is the way spring has gone. Snow falls one day to cover a field in white to melt again the next day to be covered once again the day after that.

So we revel in it. We laugh to see the snowflakes falling again, and beneath a hot sun on another day we are amazed to see the ground as though we thought we never would, the dried leaves from last season, emerging flattened and damp, the water running freely along our driveway, across the stones of our path, and right there beside this new, busy river, a snowbank still feet deep.