Winter’s End
All around the melting ice forms little oceans with foothills of packed snow blocking their underground escape routes. Diminutive bergs from broken ice sheets slosh around in the waves of passing cars; footage for a global warming documentary for ants (a big-headed red one in a puffy parka speaks into a pherophone as the ice collides dramatically behind it. It wins several awards at film festivals). Everywhere the ground is muddy with the sand and salt built up over the winter, and eventually it will form a coat of dust that will give being outdoors a feeling of finding favourite toys lost in an attic.
Soon spring will come, with dripping wet days of snow banks slinking away from the sun’s renewed assertiveness and finally taking refuge under barriers of gravel, in shadowy corners, and on the steepest slopes of north-facing hills. For another year their dastardly plot to bury civilization under glaciers will be defeated. Once again, we will step outside standing straight with giddy smiles, after months of walking hunched like fugitives trying to go unnoticed by the wind. A few weeks later, seeds and buds will dare the same optimism.
But for now, the forecast keeps talking about cold, and I’m getting impatient. Hurry up already, you damn season.
