Restarting the mood on March 1st began with a step outside.
The air was still and cold, but not unbearably so. It was above freezing, and water droplets hung from the Chinese dogwood branches. It didn’t feel like lion weather, so the old adage for March entering like that majestic beast had not yet come to pass. This early in the morning, before work, before the delivery trucks rumbled by, before the mailman made his stop, the stillness of the start of a new month – the month in which spring arrives – felt rife with a strange and almost-unfamiliar sense of hope. I think it was the birdsong that surrounded me.
Glorious, continuous, all-encompassing birdsong filled the air – birds were suddenly in the trees and the bushes and the sky – their chirping and calls a most wonderful symphony. It was service to the soul, a long deep drink that quenched a parched thirst I had’t quite realized was there from all the winter silence. Such peace was not to last, nor were these droplets on the dogwood tree.
When the work day was done, I sat down to a meditation, while outside the wind picked up. It would continue to grow, howling and raging and announcing that the birds were gone and the lion had arrived. March begins again, with a roar.
