Spring in the North is a pungent bloom of dust, debris and dog-poop.

In Love Again

The timid sun tiptoes back from Mazatlan longing to court the earth once more; hoping that winter’s sleep has erased the memory of jilted love.  She responds, all ablaze with forsythian passion, receiving his warm caresses, forgiving his errant ways. She meets him in Kasugai, tiny flowers in her hair, stirring to life the languid Koi, the turtle on the rock, the verdant lily-pads.  Here, amid the cedars and maple trees, in pond-mud rich with last year’s silt; here, on the bench by the rushing cascade, the sun and the earth are in love again.

The Rite of Spring                                                                                                         

Despite the cool lake breeze, coffee worshippers gather beneath a tepid sun for the rite of spring. You can see them along the sidewalk cafes, jackets unbuttoned in holy defiance; mug-huggers, sipping java, chatting freely as if it were a hot day in July.  At GioBean, Starbucks and Blenz, they lounge beneath trees still rubbing sleep from their eyes.  With caffeinated breath, oblivious to the obnoxious sound of labourers blowing leaves, they celebrate the bean.

Traffic in the City

The din of traffic builds like a trickle foreshadowing the torrent that will follow.  Harvey Avenue becomes slower and more difficult to navigate, while parking on Bernard is harder to find.    Vintage cars emerge from storage like snowbirds returning home.  And on Ellis a deadly black Ferrari glides by a white Lamborghini.  They are the runway models of their kind whose self-absorption is magnified by the yellow pedicab and the silent Vespa unassumingly going about their everyday lives.  On city streets where trees have been pruned, cars have no windows and skateboards abound.

Life Triumphant

The Rotary Centre for the Arts is a ferment of children whom spring has unleashed to games of Red Rover and Tag.  Their squeals, chases and chatter are without bounds.  Coats that parents have buttoned to the neck, and hats once neatly laced have been abandoned while their owners romp and wrestle with glee.  Down the vineyard promenade comes the teacher with her ducklings in tow, all abuzz with the brilliance of everyday life; their knapsacks filled with momma’s cooking and the playful necessities of life.  They do not understand the dynamics of the vernal equinox, but they don’t have to; they are spring’s signature of life triumphant.

Two-wheeled Predators

On downtown streets flanked by red-bricked buildings, the rumble-bum exhaust of black-leathered gangs on patrol can be heard. Roaring and growling past the city court-house, only a tobacco-spit from the golden daffodils, they too are a sign of spring.  On pampered motorbikes parked along the walkways, helmets are left unsecured with the arrogant assurance that they are too dangerous to be stolen.   Civilization bristles at their arrival, but remembers that spiders are also roused in spring, and that the season does not discriminate upon whom she bestows her blessings.

Some say that spring is only a transition to be endured, an encumbrance of impulsive weather leading to the giddy highs of summer.  These are the one-season barbarians fixed on the bling of tans, parties and business.  With souls too dull to be enchanted by a belly full of life, Verna in her splendor eludes them.