. Spinning .

I open one more window, but it doesn’t work. I must take myself outside to breathe in the season. Leaving forty years tucked into forty jars of custard, like the apricots you hide in old prune boxes when you no longer live alone. Suck in the tummy, chest thrown out to perky, and sixteen I am again and out the door.

The slamming of the screen door was what I needed. A few steps further out, I block out the persistent twittering of happy feathered things, and listen; there it is, the sound of photosynthesis. I smell it too, but not as strongly as in early May when heads are lopped, and blood smells sweet and green. Tulip tips and other trembling gremlins raise their hands in surrender to white winter; they soon will realize the battle has moved on while they were hiding in the trenches, and burst in smiles of colored crowns of only temporary victory.

But over there, the grass I love should not be growing, and weeds behave like long lost friends to cluster in reunion. The battlefield is strewn with severed limbs lost in valiant show against an icestorm. The tiller then, and spade and rake must be called back into action, and they grumble, creak and groan because they thought the war was won.

But before that, before the grass on backyard hills becomes too soft and warm, and while the noisy winter yellow blades still mingle with the tender green, I must go back even further. I pluck off a few more years and set them neatly on the ground beside me, look down the yard and plan my journey; then lay down upon the edge of cresting lawn, a little push, and laughing, rolllllllllll away.

Forsythias, oh Forsythias! Greek gloriously named seers, yellow-mouthed mini-trumpets of Spring. Blond Daffadowndillies from brown bulb roots grow, after applying Spring Clairol they are ready to show. Gone, I see, are the lavendar crocus lips that quenched the thirst of the earth. Treebuds are swelling like twelve-year old girls, maple red, lilac green, willow gold. Spring dancing oak leaves, escaped from the rake, emerge from their flower-bed hideouts. Scorned heaters, storm windows, old blankets, crying in sympathied piles by the road, like another winter will never be here? Nice tush on the man on the porch roof, a good day to repair the shingles he thought. Carloads of relatives visiting relatives, bearable when not cold-weather confined. Colorful churches with pastel Easter outfits, in case no one noticed last Sunday. Sleeveless goose-bumpled arms of impatient teenagers. The elderly, smarter; dress proper in lighter weight woolen without hat and gloves. Southern Baptist Choirs of birds of diversity trilling joyously the Songs of the South. Vroom-vroom in 6-packs go Harleys; fright-wigged women cling to the backs of their gods. Blood-swells from warm weather and foot’s heavier now, driving fifty up curving hills that bring me back home. Vroom-vroom.