SPRUNG SPRING Spring cannot be said to a have "sprung" this year.
It has more or less "oozed up" during these mid-March days. it was forced to do so through some rather heavy crusts of frost, too, but the Sun knew what time of the year it was and came and it came rolling across the Blue Ridge mountains to the east of us; hooked the edges of that shadow-like sheet of frost and shook all that rime in the river - the lakes and a ponds and just a scattered, damped-down hint of it appears on moving waters. Jack Frost still seems to thinks he can stop Spring from returning one of these years. He keeps trying.
I see on TV that the Japanese Cherry Trees have blossomed pretty much as scheduled again this year to keep the Cherry Blossom Festival legal. What a beautiful sight! What a wonderful way to celebrate friendship and understanding!" There are elements of frost to be felt there, too, because each year when I see the Tidal Basin so vigorously resplendent and bloom beyond imagination I still feel the horror of symbolic Pearl Harbor and all of the sorry, pain, suffering, want and degradation brought so needlessly upon millions of humans in many places across the charred, battered body of our mutual world...including those of the"Land of the Rising Sun" Perhaps that same sun, shining now on both nations living in prosperity and harmony will engender the enduring wealth of dedicated friendship akin to oneness. Just by seeing seeing these flowers blooming constantly and so colorfully we might come to know the heart and mind other men and women who are ,have been or will be willing and eager to share such beauty at all times in all climes.
A.L.M. March 30, 2006 [c310wds]
