Blackberry Winter

It has been a long Winter. Not in the calendar sense, as the calendar does not change. The dates and seasons stay the same. Days ticking off in twenty-four hour increments. Moons waxing and waning. It has been a strange Winter. Not in the sense of extraordinary. Or curious. Or funny. But in the sense of unusual. A snowless November and December, morphing into relentlessly snow-filled, Arctic days and nights. Drifts growing, bringing images of polar bears and igloos. Frigid days melting into rainy spasms of droplets that transform into ice crystals and spitting sleet. Followed by more Arctic days and nights. Words from the weatherman swirling in the air like snowflakes in blowing winds.”Snow-maggedon.” “Wind bomb.” “Polar vortex.” Words that slip and slide and whip off the tongue as one tries to grasp the peculiar circumstances of the winter that seems neverending.

Through the Arctic chill of the morning, the first hope of change echoes between snow-covered houses…somewhere in the distance, the call of a robin, urging Spring to a blackberry Winter, the vernal equinox.