winter is ending

winter is ending. i love the changes of all the seasons but i hate this part, the dying

breath: it is stubbornly cold, still choking out drifts of snow; the city is grey, grey and

dirty and dreary. flowers are waiting quietly, the trees are checking their clocks, and

there is a sense of ebbing patience in the air.

i love the beginning of every season. the first sharp scents of autumn, the sudden

real cold of winter, the sweetness of the blossoming spring — even the bright heat

as summer descends. but it all withers and dies, and there is always a week or two

when you can smell the decay. it is a fading, a perpetual wash: the brilliant oranges

and golds turn to brown in december and the stark sheer white turns to grey in march;

the new flowers, so pink and delicate and shy, by june they are bold and suntanned and

naked. and the saddest are the september trees, still a lurid green, as they give themselves

up to the inescapable grey.