It came just the same

Early this morning, I headed down to the coffee shop under branches of cherry and plum blossoms now past their prime. The petals have descended overnight leaving a ring across the grass and pavement resembling heavenly bodies hurled outward from a celestial big bang.

Spring has nearly finished arriving.  The lilacs are blooming on the corner of our street.  The plane trees, always a bit behind, are finally leafing out.  Outside our window, an ancient tree, that looks for all the world like a profile of a lady's head with upswept hair, has attracted the local urban deer.  I watched a doe, black nose upturned in anticipation, balance on her hind legs to nip off the blossoms.  This week, the fallen flowers carpet the ground, where the fawns can feast on four legs.

Returning from a recent reluctant shopping foray, I strode down the hill on Linden Avenue, and remembered I hadn't bothered to search out the magnolias.  Across the street, two blooms still clung on for dear life.

In so many ways, I almost missed spring this year.  A small part of me believed it might not come.  How can spring come, now that Demeter is no more?

But I don't, despite all appearances, exist within a Greek myth.  

Not even a Greek tragedy.

More like a human comedy.

Make that a tragicomedy.