The Curve of the Month

I think there is a day or a period of days when you can see the curve of time passing broadly in the month. Different from the day to day to day progress where time moves mosaically, its transit undetected until after the fact.

In August, February's opposite number, there's often a big rain, I've noticed, that breaks a long muggy period. And after the storm, you get a glimpse of fall. Just a glimpse: high clouds in a bluer blue sky, a fresher breeze, a clean-washed face, ready for change.

I think I detected its Feb. counterpart today. Another snow blew in yesterday, a real embrace, not that air kiss from last week. A good solid six inches, and we woke to cake frosting on all the branches and twigs, snow blobs that began to fall on our heads as the morning indicated that this would be a forty-degree day. It was a storm we recognized as February's: stickier snow, a tick beyond mid-winter, rain on the Cape. And afterwards, today, in the flocs of snow in the branches, in the flow of clouds over Spy Pond, you could see, not spring but that big curve of the month, more indicative than Spring Training that we're going somewhere...