“Realize” is one of Henry Thoreau’s favorite verbs, and surely the word in other forms drew his eye too. “Reality is fabulous,” he wrote in Walden, and his pursuit of the real in his daily walks is everywhere recorded in his journals.
But today, here in Maine? Really? Is it really spring? And is that really snow, the sort that falls in flakes beyond counting – a bonanza of flakes it might be called – and then begins to be itself on the ground…and on every limb and twig?
I ask the birds as I refill the feeder: “Really?” I say. “Keep filling the sleeve,” they say. “It’s getting hard to find seeds out here. Pour, man; pour.”
I do as I’m told; I am a compliant human, a pour man. Then, I retreat to work in my windowside chair; I realize the snow’s not stopping.
Early
And on
More
Really
Really.