Mary Meigs wrote this piece in spring 2001 while she was recovering from a stroke, and which is reproduced here exactly as she typed it, Meigs writes: "In occupational therapy, it was a great joy to use the old Underwood electric typewriter to strengthen the fingers of my left hand. The window looked out at the tree-clad face of the mountain, leafless and then completely green, which rose back of the hospital to join the sky"
the treesare still wqiting for a wake-up call a voice of the chromosomres saying oh trees so straight-laced poker-waisted bend, undulate shake your heads, sprout some joyful buds Spring is no longer cruelly deceivin you; she is here for real. Rejoice’ another week has gone by.sunny foreground shadinbrigh tly grey up into aadark patch of amasses tree -t ops and lower left thr road and b oulders reaaly parked crs hidden by a long cur wall of snow-v isi bly cars because bri ght diamonds of sunlight are glinting from the metal surfaces. I have a bird’s- view of the growin g the growing hollows around the bottoms of nearby tees as the snow melts Is it reaaly happening at last? the spring melt? Today-April 5ththe sun in the pollution-free, it seems , sluest sky, somewhere a bove and behind me, a crow planingon a warm up draftthrough the trees... it will last until tomorrow thiethis meltlngspring wonder and perhaps rain will finish the benign process.Newfandland has had a 30 cm. snowfall, the snow workers are on strike,a woman has died and the whole province is fed up (just as we were before the last few days of reprieve The sky is darkening the old granit, catiy-cormered of the prehidtproc Royal Vic a menacing grey-black. Deep wells now in which all the trees stand measure the rate of melting. Near by and b elow pairs of trees share c oval wells. A thundersosm predicted-April l4th. Down there in the Keys the light of every day is so bright says M.C v ia her literary cat and his blue eyes reflect the sky of yesterday and tomorrow. A qhite car the color of snow just glided down th hill a week ag o?April 24th and the glorious blue sky broke fre sulky grey for a whileand I thought do I want it to rain that much after Lyn’s story of the thirsty rootsbecause of frozen ground and e vaporation But the flourishing yew, the weeping juniper and spruce with its heavy head on the ground all happily greendo not look thirsty... Two thin white birches in front of me. anovercast day but no snow- yet.The stirght thin trees are marching sri salmost to the top of the mountain where a comany of as thin and strigh t as they are is lookin g down at them. Could it b e going a bo ve freezing today for the first time since December today? There is the human cursor moving horizontallyacross the zrrees-a shuttle (the musical shut the wood thrush who speaks in summer and is far away which o six weeks after the winter solatice, said a friedd, and there ithere are I don ’t know how many more minutes of ligjt very noticea ble morning and afternoon.Fifteen minutes now to impromise Yesterday the suirrel our house-squieel perched on the corner-post on the porch le the beauty-sqirrel of the clanwith hi s tail arched so tightll over his back that not even a pinhole of air could be seen. He is a perfect sentinel. Now I can see the snowlakesfallin g afaaling over the dark verticles of the trees.It walinvisible white snow,their-amatter mother-maatter.And why can’t you see have thousands if not nillions of IBMa,etc that hide what they just wrote from the typist (me )? a gloroius day .Will the ice in front of my house melt?A rough and infinitely cautious trip down to Gloria’s housewher the pa vement is bare andIicould get zto the help of Elizabeth ever-kind on her way home .Familiar view of the soaring snowy mountain with its vertical thin straight leakless treea.So different from thewidw city- New on the ozher stetching away to a long straig ht hills The marv;;ous old dark time- blackened Royal Vie buildin in the foreground with magnificent wrought iron railing around the top, a cupola on the zoof with a qubec f;ag flying from the top and a Maple Leaf on the same level near by; rosy light glowing through b oth at sunrise and s stiff north wind b lowing them straight south. The changes in thi s view sustained me for the three days I was in Room ?. bed 1 of a 4-bed
