A Little Madness

Frankly, Spring thinks it's the end of times.

Perhaps she didn't get the memo about the end of the world prophecy being postponed (if anything I'm going with the Mayans on this one). I understand, its easy to get all geared up for something, I waited until Monday to mail my student loan payments. I'm sure that any day now Spring will check her in-box and get on with exchanging the lion for the lamb and bringing May flowers.

Because it's raining, in an entirely biblical way. Hail and sleet, thunder and lightning, tornadoes and high winds, no locusts or frogs as of yet, but I'm keeping an eye out. I think Spring has been taking a leisurely walk down memory lane, and found a fondness for "The Great Flood" I'm not particularly enjoying the highlight reel. It's a bit damp. 

A Midwestern spring is kind of a weather whirligig, I've come to expect sunshine giving way to snowfalls late into May. This is where Spring cleans out her closet of mismatched weather patterns, she seems a little over zealous this year. Spring is uncertainty, she's a closed book, a complete meteorological question mark. Spring decides to dance in thunderstorms one day and bask in the sunshine another, threading flowers in her hair. While I'm switching out my rain boots for sandals on a daily basis, shaking my head at the changeability of Spring,  I often think of this poem. 

   

A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown —
Who ponders this tremendous scene —
This whole Experiment of Green —
As if it were his own!

- Emily Dickinson  

Emily is a kindred spirit of mine. Something about her concise and poignant prose perfectly captures the essence of Spring. I can only wonder what she would have written about this weather. I'm sure she would have gotten completely caught up in it, as I am wont to do. Spring fever may be the only affliction I endeavor to procure. 

 

Spring is nature's pretext to be a little ludicrous. That's why it's easier to act in the spring, to change without reason. To not think and just do, because it's Spring and why not? What's life without a little madness anyway?