The Thaw

The thaw came quite suddenly, and without warning, the three-fingers deep snow that had blanketed the ground for months gone in the blink of a cardinal’s eye. The deer felt it first, with their sensitive pelts and skittish nature. We could see them all throughout this sleepy Midwestern town the night before, stamping their hooves and listening for the massive echo they seemed to know would follow. The beautiful creatures could not be fooled.

But we were still in shock the next morning at the break of dawn, when winter’s child had gone to sleep and awoken with the glorious coat of spring wrapped lovingly around her shoulders. And what broad shoulders indeed. We had forgotten while the world of white had taken us in its embrace for months on end. Indeed, time had stood still, but it started moving again, slowly at first, and then more insistently, to the flow of the moving stream that jockeyed for position amidst the flotsam and jetsam left by the frosty prodigal, so quickly forced from her squatter’s abode.

And lest we forget them, the precious little jonquils even began to peek their heads out of the flowerbeds they had been slumbering in before being dragged to the surface. They would soon scurry back under their warm covers, but their time aboveground gave the merest hint already that the chill would soon evaporate from the air. The chill that gave brief flight to the bluebird’s wings, that little bird that made its nest in the old, knotty pine tree in the yard three houses down. It soon returned home with a wonderful tale to tell its children who would, too, be taking wing soon.

Then we heard the pitter-pat of little feet, or the approximation thereof, directly outside the open front door, realizing as we approached that it was the dripping of icicles that were losing their essence, melting away to the thin air from whence they came. Overhead, large birds flew in a semi-solid formation, not quite a V, but something more like a U, they too confused as to which direction they should head. Just like the disenfranchised deer from the night before who are still in town. We passed them in the car an hour ago, and I wished I could tell them everything would be alright, to soothe their jangled nerves. But I can’t, because it won’t, and they will need those nerves.

Because the thaw never lasts.

Sam