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Poor Will's Almanack: March 15 - March 21, 2022

Early Spring around Hücker Moor, Spenge, Ostwestfalen, Germany
Christian Kortum
/
Flickr Creative Commons

Poor Will’s Almanack for the Fourth Week of Early Spring, the third week of the Black-Capped Chickadee Moon, the fourth week of the sun in moist Pisces, the transition to the Sun in to Aries, and the week of Spring Equinox which occurs next Sunday on March 20.

I am sitting in my father's armchair, on Equinox, 2018

Cold weather holds the progress of the year at about four daffodils and three patches of crocus. After two inches of snow, a thaw wind is gusting against my house.

After a short morning walk, I am looking out the window. Watching cardinals and black-capped chickadees and house sparrows at the feeder.

I Remember a poem by the Spanish poet Jorge Guillen, "Beato Sillón" or "Blessed/Holy Chair."

Through the poem, Guillen sinks into the peace of his house, his chair. "Nothing is happening," he writes. "My eyes don't see; they know. The world in well/made." For him, the high tide of present time in that place is everything.

Now I hear the heater fan's white noise. Tangles of black winter branches divide the robin's-egg blue sky outside my window. Fat pussy willows have emerged way up above the street.

The snow I walked through this morning was crunchy and dirty. Now the sidewalk is under a deep puddle. The waterfall from my blocked gutters pulses and splatters onto the front steps.

For an instant, sparrows take over the feeder, fighting, crowding, attacking, pushing, flying off.

Now Nothing is happening. I am here in my father's armchair at time's high tide. I know that the wet wind from the southwest is sweet with spring. The world is well/made.

This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the fifth week of early spring. In the meantime, find an armchair. Sit and watch and listen.

Bill Felker has been writing nature columns and almanacs for regional and national publications since 1984. His Poor Will’s Almanack has appeared as an annual publication since 2003. His organization of weather patterns and phenology (what happens when in nature) offers a unique structure for understanding the repeating rhythms of the year.