Close of winter walk

Look closely.  Do you see the prints on the ice?  Geese, I imagine, plodding over the frozen lake daydreaming of warm skies and fat little bugs and green weeds.

Citizens of the small lakes (as we call them, truly they are large ponds I think).  Tired of winter as we are.

Doesn't this blue sky hint of warmer days?  Yet the end of winter has its own beauty, the way the earth always insistantly reminds us that despite our digging in, everything changes constantly around us.

the little birds in the reeds and bushes were making quite a racket.  Nearby at the high school despite the cold, the kids were out with coaches practicing sports, running with an ease and grace as I stumbled around hard earth that shifted to mud slops that hid mangled tree limbs...this would make a fine obstacle course, coaches!

Across the way the little library looking very remote in the wilderness except for the busy road that fronts it.  The park still bears the ravages of the previous year when I did my first Spring walk and was so sad to see the big willow gone, so many other trees gone, but just two days ago we saw a swan and are hoping to see it return.  Come Spring perhaps.