PAUL CHRISTENSEN

The vernal equinox came and went, like a cat creeping over the newly sprouted heads of anonymous weeds. You hardly knew, unless you were listening to NPR, that such an event was coming due. The sun was exactly angled at the horizon, and all that solar archery was piercing the cloud fleece and landing at the primordial waist of the planet. Then we began the journey to longer days. I felt it in my bones. I also felt it in my soul, because with the equinox comes my birthday each

We're getting another snowstorm this afternoon. It almost makes me break down in sobs I am so tired of freezing winds and storms coming up the coast and throwing out enough skirts of shivery precipitation to get this far north. Boston, New York City, Phillly, they'll all get shellacked with ice and blizzards. Maybe not as bad as a few storms ago, but plenty mischievous nonetheless. But each time we get a March storm, it leaves behind this rumpled, messy quilt bunched up on al

There is no greater pleasure in these dark days than to see the icicles on the porch eave melting in steady streams, like pouring water on a wicked witch. Behind the icicles is a blue sky, and snow hugging every shrub and tree branch. The world is one vast Wedgewood teapot of pale colors, each one more serene and distant than the other. I shiver to think what all this aging ice means, but the melting daggers tell me not everything is made of steel or aimed at my heart. The we