Blog Post #6: In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb

27 degrees Fahrenheit

Feels like 17 degrees Fahrenheit

March is said to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb. I’ve always loved that saying. It illustrates the end to the blustery, roaring winter months and promises the glorious entrance of the soft days of spring.

This past weekend it felt like spring outside. In the warmer weather, my backyard suddenly seems so inviting. Despite my ballooning belly and the difficulty it gives me when I try to bend over, I spend much of the day Saturday raking up the leaves we spread as covering compost last fall. The leaves did not completely break down over the winter and clearing them away feels as though I’m clearing away two seasons, fall and winter. There are more of the same green sprouts I discovered last week popping out of the uncovered ground. The tulips and daffodils are still green shafts. The crocuses are in full bloom and there are more and more groups of them. They are perfectly bunched lavender bouquets, hunched close to the ground. Nestled in the green grass, they look like an Easter basket display. On one of the crocus clusters there is a honey bee crawling in and out of each purple blossom. The first bee of the season!  

But the lion returned yesterday, easily devouring the lamb. Today, the low gray sky is spitting snowflakes in every direction making it hard for me to keep my notebook pages flat, let alone dry. The lovely patches of crocuses are hardy, though. They don’t seem to be bothered by the cold and wind, presumably the result of millions of years of evolution. Their time to bloom is now, in a month that can change from 60 degrees Fahrenheit to 25 degrees Fahrenheit in a day. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the lion didn’t devour the lamb. Maybe the lion is roaring its frosty last breath in the lamb’s gentle, purple-flowered face.  And the lamb grows that much stronger for it.

I heard this poem about the end of winter on the Writer’s Almanac a few days ago:

In the Late Season

At the soft place in the snowbank
Warmed to dripping by the sun
There is the smell of water.
On the western wind the hint of glacier.
A cottonwood tree warmed by the same sun
On the same day,
My back against its rough bark
Same west wind mild in my face.
A piece of spring
Pierced me with love for this empty place
Where a prairie creek runs
Under its cover of clear ice
And the sound it makes,
Mysterious as a heartbeat,
New as a lamb.

"In the Late Season" by Tom Hennen, from DarknessSticks to Everything. © Copper Canyon Press, 2013.