Enjoying Your Lilacs In Maine In February

Enjoying Your Lilacs

In Maine

In February

            I didn’t really feel that this needs to be explained

            But evidently it does.

            It is Maine.

            It is February.

            It is a season of joy.

            If you do not know this, you have left (the region) or

            Should leave

            “Right along please”.

            I am quite sure I can do without you

            And your obsessive tyranny regarding you and

            My

            Winter weather.

            I do not care about what boots you wear

            And how your feet are “still cold”.

            You lost a mitten;

            So what.

            The snow sticks to your snow shovel;

            So what.

            You have been inside for “WEEKS” and “CANNOT GET OUT”

            You say

            To me as if I am supposed to drop by with a two month old Christmas

            Fruit cake and a full gallon of rum.

            I find that you are in a PINCH... don’t I.

            The squirrels have eaten all of the seed at your birdfeeder yet

            A woodpecker still hangs upside down on it.

            You are not running out of firewood; you never do.

            Your car always starts... no matter how “COLD” you say it is.

            The student council still has its monthly meeting.

            You still go

            And still complain about the “cookies”

            You never bake anything.

            I just had to buy more propane because my wife has been

            Baking so much

            It’s really ‘in’ you know; baking in Maine in February.

            ALL the girls are doing it.

            We even bought more walnuts... for the banana bread.

            Yesterday I slid the side door to the barn open to

            Catch the (radiant energy of the) sun so I may sit in a chair there;

            In the sun, and READ

            An I841 history of the settlement of the Coos country (New Hampshire).

            1754-1785.

            That’s the area west-northwest of the White Mountains;

            Piermont, Haverhill and northward.

            I read the part about traveling thereabout in the February cold and having to

            NOT fall asleep when resting because one would

            FREEZE TO DEATH.

            I know; you’ve never been there in February.

            I have.  Plenty of times.

            I know exactly where that is.  In the Colonial era one could

            STARVE TO DEATH there to.

            But you don’t have to worry about that.

            No:

            You “cannot get the dog to go out” (go out to go).

            That’s getting nasty in there?

            Maybe purchasing a leash and driving into town and taking

            A brisk walk around the Common.  Notice how all your feathered friends are hanging around there too?

            “They must have flown there.” you say.

            Well... it IS south of your home... and its empty feeder.

            I know:  You have a bird society sticker ON your car.

            But the sticker is only good for the warmer nine months of the year

            You say.

            You are quite a chunk of suet aren’t you.

            When I travel around my farmyard; the five buildings and their outer farmyard spaces,

            On my snow management designations... I gasp at the beauty before me.

            “Where about?  How about?” may all this be so wonderfully

            Full of winter wonder. 

            I do not shovel past things.  No.  I stop and embrace my lilacs in February;

            Their ‘snowy still there dried dead buds and blossoms’.  LAST SPRING’S; they stayed on from then; dead dry and hanging in their very own clump of new fallen snow.

            They are putting on an art fair; a local showing of their local farmyard art

            In my yard in February

            In Maine.

            Do you know what this looks like; what I am speaking of?