a new wind

There is a new wind tonight. She is born of mud and crack and thaw, on the heels of sunlit last snow. Usually she first whispers in March, but the sap is running now in early February and I’ve already heard someone say “snowdrops.” So, the bulbs and the buds and the wind have it.

Winter wind cracks and whips, it is more force than voice. It is hollow, sharp, and fierce. On a dark January night it catches us, snaps at us, and then leaves us staring at stark stars, everything sharpened. It does not linger in its work.

But the wind tonight was speaking, with chill enough to hone and brighten, but now with character. It is beginning to be laden, as now there are bits of the world to carry, opening. Soon galls and buds will release; the machinery is at work. The stew is stirring. It won’t be long now before skunk cabbage, those alien claws that seem to exhume themselves.

This year’s turning of seasons is dipped in unease, come too early and earned too easily. But tonight’s wind, and the moonlit river, and that first smell of grass can’t be written off. They speak too softly, are too lovely, and move us too deeply and deftly. We are grasped, gladly lured into another brimming turn.