Signs of spring:

The school busses won’t travel on the backroads due to impassably muddy stretches. The superintendent sends an email: Drop off your kids to meet a bus at the corner barn…

An enormous flock of singing blackbirds in a single maple tree beside the post office.

Steam from the sugarhouse sweetening cold fog; April’s come early, this year.

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain…
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night…

– T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Hardwick, Vermont/Photo by Molly S.