Joy Ride

No matter how painful, creativity can be kept under control.  You tend to the everyday, the mundane, and then award yourself a moment of reverie.  From this, with a bit of luck, inspiration can be wrested.  Then back to the necessities and the obligations.

But not in March.  March takes the matter out of your hands.  It's a force that rips you from the real and hurls you headlong beyond it.

Each year I determine it won't happen again.  There are chores to attend, classes to teach.  I've no time to waste on premature fancies.  Then a crocus winks, and I'm undone.

Slowly, implacably, March draws me in his roller coaster.  "Wait!" I protest.  But a robin blinks, and crick-crack the rails move by.  "Please, just a moment more!"  But forsythia swell, and a wind roars louder near the summit.  "Not yet, not yet!"  And now, with a raucous laugh, March grants a moment in suspension.

Behind me lies the winter, a round of endless care.  Before, below, the forgotten world of green.  All that I am, all that I will be, hang in the balance.  Time and Life join hands, and I am offered an equinox of the soul.  Then with a roar of triumph, March sends his coaster downward.  Wildly, almost frightened, I plunge breathless into spring.