Monday Meander – February 1, 2021

Starting Over

Let’s face it – as a first month of a new year, January 2021 was a bust! Nothing new about it in my part of the world, unless one counts a new lockdown, a new State of Emergency, a new Stay At Home order, new virus variants, new uncertainty, and new disappointments. Oh, and let’s not forget new bickering over vaccine supplies on both a local and global scale. 

Not a single one of these new year things was even close to being on my wish list!

My first task this morning was to tear the January page off the wall calendar. Never has the sound of ripping paper given me such delight, such resolve to begin again, to kick off into the day, the month, the year anew – restrictions, uncertainties, and all.

“February…

Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,

It kissed the forehead of the Earth,

And smiled upon the silent sea,

And bade the frozen streams be free,

And waked to music all their fountains,

And breathed upon the frozen mountains…"

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

 

 

 

 

“With the lengthening days which distinguish the third month of winter from its predecessor, come ardent desires for spring, and longings for the time of birds and flowers. An adventurous swallow too early flying from the south, a vision of snowdrops in the snow, a day of April warmth lit by a slant February sun, are all hailed with pleasure as harbingers of a more gracious season on its northland way.”  

Oscar Fay Adams, January 1886

“Today is the first of February, snowy, brilliant, but dripping with the sound of spring wherever the sun lies warm, and calling with the heart of spring yonder where the crows are assembling. There is spring in the talk of the chickadees outside my window, and in the cheerful bluster of a red squirrel in the hickory.”  

Dallas Lore Sharp, The Atlantic Monthly, February 1908

February makes a bridge and March breakes it.

Selected from the Finest Fancies of Moderne Muses, with a Thousand Outlandish Proverbs

(edited by George Herbert, 1593–1633)

  

It’s  first day of the first month of the rest of 2021. Let’s build some bridges!

 

©2021 April Hoeller