Grey March

I think I am beginning to understand the English. How excited they get when the sun appears. Why they throw off all their clothes and lie in parks in the sun turning pink. The last many weeks in New York have been unusually grey.

Today there is another white out. A high white glare that sucks colour out of everything. White on the ground is one thing. But white in the sky is oppressive.

Two evenings ago, while I was completing my errand route, the sun came out. I dashed home, shook the Frenchman, barked, Roof! mixed two drinks, and we shot up the ladder before the sun disappeared again. We sat there, like two contemplative lemmings considering the abyss, and watched the cat prowl the rooftops, the ferries cross the harbor. The local cardinal was in full voice. In the distance over Jersey a haze moved towards us, and when I went to tend the braai fire on the terrace, I discovered that sleet was falling. I looked up. I could see stars in a clear sky. Precipitation continued to hiss into the coals. I held an umbrella over our steak and looked at the blue night. To the Northeast, past the Brooklyn skyline, that haze bank - the edge of a big New England storm - moved toward the Atlantic at an angle, and brushed us with ice.

Last night, at 2am, I heard the geese, two flights passing north, on the second day of spring.