February has always in my mind contained a “false spring.”  I must have heard the phrase in Iowa, decades back, where a lull in the harshness of winter, where as newly arrived graduate students, we were told that temperatures could freeze eyelashes, created a sense of spring.  Somehow I imagine forsythia blooming, but I am really thinking of March or April in a mild global warming (it has been happening for years) when the bright yellow flowers played up so against the patches of snow, and tufts of green grass.

Here in the northeast of the united states, we had a paroxysm of blizzard, wind shutting power grids which still have not been righted.  A cab driver told me he slept in his closet during the frigid temperatures with a camp-stove.

But now the ice is melting.  chunks of snow fall from the roof, and birds are singing again.  A squirrel comes to inspect what she can, and I have propped open a screened window for some fresh air.

I think of the TV series Northern Exposure when they once had an episode about the actual spring thaw, when if I am remembering correctly, libido was released in a frenzy.

Valentine’s Day is approaching.  A day whose ideal more than anything to give love, and give more love. Keep on giving, and try again when you recognize you still have not let go of those old patterns of a bittered heart.  Tell yourself,there is no use in bitterness, except as one of the seven or is it five senses of taste.  Just give love, and give more love.

All in all, it was just twenty-four hours without power or heat.  Frigid cold though.  How much I take for granted.

The snow covered all the windows completely, except for a few small streaks to peer through.

The wind rattled my home so fiercely I realized that the way my unit was shaped, I lived in a treehouse.

At times I thought the roof would blow off.

I wandered downstairs, but went back up, carrying my flashlight.

I tried to read by candlelight ( appropriately, Ancient Light by John Banville), then by flashlight.

The folks who built the fancy stationary goods company made their fortune, deservedly, with tiny reading book lights.

After the storm, which raged two days, mounds of snow were left.  Mounds, like soft vanilla ice cream, like Ponds lotion in a tub, like snow.

The snow plow came by four times.