After a long winter that shook things with ice and extensive tree damage for many starting in December, then the deep snow and cold and early dark weeks piled up one against the other for months. And don't forget 5 miles of mud roads no matter whichway we left the house, just recently. By the time we came to Spring, and it does come, there is that one morning the sunlight changes its angle and the birds notice this before anyone. Hear the difference in their song. Even the river seems to run less with snow melt and more by the energy of new growth. Out in the big yard we took to raking long before the snow was gone. We'd work every day wherever the sun had melted and take up the wet leaves for compost and a million small branches and lift up the rubble of stonewall top rocks that spilled off and rake smooth all the wood ashes spread over ice paths during the season. After a full month of this snow melt and raking the yard is now almost dry of snow. There always remains the diminishing snow pile by the north door that never leaves until almost May. While raking the hosta bed today, the long one on the eastern side, near the long woodshed eaves, I found a word in the debris. The only word I raked up all Spring. It could have been any word. I could have invented any word. No need for inventions in such a world. Here's the one I found as it found me.
