psring

New fine shadows on the road. What from? The arching yellow-green foliage overhead. Kind of a mesh, a reticulation of areolae, if I may. May I? (I'll just tiptoe away from it and keep on going when someone yells, Hey! Who left this reticulation of areolae lying here?)

It's time to take a broader view. I feel like I've been squinting at April, peering at turtles and phoebes, quarreling over florets, flirting a little with willowy sirens. And maybe missing the bigger picture. Spring.

True, the young season took a bodacious leap yesterday, submitting to the heat of the moment and popping out all over in leaflets and blossoms. But today cooler heads prevailed. Back to the sensible fifties. Did the trees feel hung over after their binge? Did today's chill make the emboldened leaves shrink a little from embarrassment? Nah. They probably know what they're doing.

An early walk through the Brooks Estate yielded no wood thrushes, nor even an uncanny brown thrasher vociferating from a treetop. Just a dawn chorus of the usual April crew: peter-petering but never petering tufted titmice, blue jays sounding limpid one minute, strident the next, robins ringing out their moist cheeriups, a furtive chorrr from a red-bellied woodpecker somewhere, a tinny whinny from a downy, and a flicker proclaiming and proclaiming in a ringing din from some bosky podium...

How must it be for this hemisphere when the orbit reaches this zone? Did we humans ever feel that same pull, if that's what it is? Do we still, some of us? I don't just mean reacting to the warmth, the light, the delightful growth and melodye. I mean being sprung ourselves. Getting horny. Rolling around our hairy neanderthal butts in the new grass. Grunting and cawing and imitating rutting elk. Shinning up a tree to gather bunches of florets for some ugh-fest.

We kind of still do it, but tamer. Easter...estrus...Queen of the May around the maypole...give us a kiss—

I'm getting ahead of myself. April? May I have this gavotte?