The Gargoyle

We took a walk, around 1:00 this afternoon, Carol and I. It was gray. Yes, a cardinal was singing. Nothing very organized, but I've heard them enough times in the last few days to convince me that the bottle has been uncorked. Many lawns bore evidence of the terrific windstorm a few nights ago: huge fallen limbs and branches in piles. No snow, though. Some powerful spell has kept it away, giving us rain instead.

We walked past a house with a garden full of tchotchkes. There was an orb covered with colored mosaic tile and mirror bits, little stone bunnies, little angel statuettes, little stone birds around a small birdbath, and a couple of gargoyles. One of them could have been the zeitgeist of late February: hunkered, cold, naked, glumly waiting.

I should say goodbye to February, but I already did, on the 23rd. ("Here's your parka, what's your hurry?") Even so, the month insisted on playing out its string, which is its right: it's entitled to the full 28. Not that people have been making it feel wanted lately. (Can't wait for March! When the hell is spring going to get here?)

If that weren't bad enough, the 28th (today) suffers from comparison with its flashy Brigadoon-like neighbor, who co-opts it every four years, on years divisible by four— Mr. Leap Day himself, Twenty-nine! (leaps in, handing his cape and tophat to some month-valet) This year isn't one of those years, though, so we have to settle for the "common" last day, Mr. Twenty-eight.

Never mind. It's Purim! That great puppet show of a holiday with Haman (booooooo!), Esther, Mordecai, Vashti, and King Ahasuerus. Whirl your greggers against naysayers and anti-winterists! It's also the night of the full Snow Moon. And it was a very festive last day of the Vancouver Olympics, and an amazingly memorable day to celebrate being (an adopted) Canadian and a Vancouverite by singing as much of the words to O Canada as I remember. (I'm in the home stretch after "God keep our land...") So I'll add a bit of the mosaic orb to keep the gloomy gargoyle company.

And in five minutes, I'll say: "Rabbit, rabbit!" to March first.