Early Spring

Even with the cold and the snow, there IS a difference in the air and the trees this time of year.  I was saying to Sam the other day, the bare branches of the trees seem like they should look the same as they do in November---but they don't.  They are softer, maybe, or more hazy with almost-yellow color.  It's hopeful, somehow. 

Naturally, Rilke says all this better than I do.  [He was a German poet.  Don't let the "Maria" fool you into thinking he is a woman, as I did for some time.  Although interestingly enough, I read that his mother called him "Sophie" and dressed him in girls' clothes until he was 5 because she had had a baby daughter die earlier.]  So, a Spring poem for you:

Early Spring
by Rainer Maria Rilke

Harshness vanished. A sudden softness
has replaced the meadows' wintry grey.
Little rivulets of water changed
their singing accents. Tendernesses,

hesitantly, reach toward the earth
from space, and country lanes are showing
these unexpected subtle risings
that find expression in the empty trees.