One goes away for a night and a day, in late March, say the 26th – 27th, and returns to wake to a world transformed.  The solid ice has given away to water, the gravel paths reappear, and the bulbs planted last fall send out their green tips.  With a winter like we have had on the Cape, everything in the garden is a gamble.  If bulbs bloom, a blessing.  one can let go of control until the weeds come out. It will snow again, astounding us.

My eyesight no longer what it was, and tired this morning, as well, provides me with a view of ducklings I think on the water, though they could be crows.  The insistence of bird call from the trees is loud this morning, competing with the hum of the refrigerator; appliances, too, must make an adjustment for the season.

In our world, a plane is crashed.  The Dalai Lama, bless him, says he might not reincarnate.  War continues.

I return to a favorite poem:

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow…

                                                     —TS Eliot, The Wasteland

It ends, you remember, shantih, shantih, shantih.

“The peace which passeth understanding,” was one way of translating the word, he wrote.

The poem in its entirety, here.