Signs & Portents

“Why, what’s the matter,
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?”
 
William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

It occurs to me that, of all the cross-quarter days, divination is most strongly associated with Imbolc (Candlemas, Lá Fhéile Bríde) because when one lives in a part of the world where winters are intense, the signs that herald spring’s coming are the most precious of all.

Every season has its harbingers: the birds and flowers of summer, the fruits and colors of fall, the frosts and foragers of winter. Spring’s harbingers are, for the most part, invisible, buried beneath blankets of snow, secreted in the trunks of bare-branched trees, stirring in autumn-built nests they dug under our sheds and in our log piles, or nursing in warrens and dens.

But not all the portents are hidden. The sun has grown so bright and the days so long in these six weeks between Midwinter and Imbolc, there are signs of spring even in climes where winter still holds sway.

If you’d happened to be in Fort Wainwright, Alaska yesterday (as my friend Ian was), you’d surely have noticed that the sun was up for a full 6 hours, 59 minutes (as opposed to the 3 hours, 53 minutes of daylight it gave you on Midwinter’s Day).

If you were in Leixlip, Ireland (where my friend Declan lives) and ran (as he did) or jogged or strolled (my speed) through St. Catherine’s Park and along the Royal Canal to Deey Bridge, you’d surely have stumbled upon delicate snowdrops along the way, ever the earliest sign of spring.

Had you spent yesterday hanging with me, you would never have registered that the night was 30 minutes shorter than it had been at Yule. Western New York State is still firmly in the grip of winter. The diligent snowplows keep the main roads clear and the commercial parking lots park-able. But it’s snow, fer feck’s sake. Plows don’t pick the stuff up, load it onto trucks, and haul off to a snow dump. They push it into huge walls on the sides of the roads and into giant mounds in the middle of the aforementioned lots.

Yesterday was so gloriously sunny (for a change), I couldn’t resist stopping at the lake on my way home. Summer’s sandy path to the lighthouse was a slippery, packed-snow ribbon of white; the gull-rich beach was a barren white desert; the lake wore a band of white across her middle; the entrance to the bay was beautified by sheets of ice.

Punxsutawney Phil (America’s prophetic groundhog) was out and about yesterday as well, which means the fat rodent saw his shadow. And that means we’ve got six more weeks of winter ahead, a prediction the meteorologists do not dispute.

But if the snows are too deep for snowdrops, Irondequoit Bay is frozen over, the woods are silent and still, and we’ve only gained a half hour of daylight, yet, last Thursday, I saw lambs in a snow-covered field – lambs so tiny, they looked to have been born that very morning – gamely frisking about their mums on still somewhat wobbly legs. Even in sub-zero temps (last week we got down to -6F/-21C, and that’s not counting wind chill) Bríde gives us a promise of spring.

I’ve seen signs of spring in the political world, too. Frozen mindsets are beginning to thaw, hibernating moral sensibilities are re-awakening, there’s now fire in the bellies of the newly oppressed …

Guess it takes overt acts of fascist brutality against white people to penetrate our nation’s baseline social awareness. Too little, too late, if you ask me. So many have trusted in truth, justice, and the American way for so long, they can’t conceive of an America without rule of law, self-regulating mechanisms, and no recourse against injustice. They don’t understand that governments that send thugs to gun down law-abiding citizens in the streets are not governments that hold free and fair elections. Sweet as these political signs of spring are, the omens I’m reading still point to six more whatevers – decades, maybe? – of a MAGA-‘murican dictatorship.

Signs of spring do not necessarily promise good times to come. Rousing from our national lethargy is, however, absolutely and entirely a good thing.

So, in honor of Imbolc, the first day of spring, the cross-quarter of hope, I’ll end this post with a counter to the quote that began it. How did I never come across this poem before? I must have been distracted by Idylls of the King …

May the season’s omens favor you and all spring’s blessings be yours.

The Snowdrop

Many, many welcomes,
February fair-maid,
Ever as of old time,
Solitary firstling,
Coming in the cold time,
Prophet of the gay time,
Prophet of the May time,
Prophet of the roses,
Many, many welcomes,
February fair-maid!

Alfred, Lord Tennyson