Windy and warmer today.  I love the sound of chimes, and wish I could afford to buy another set - why does it seem so frivolous to spend a couple of hundred dollars on chimes, rather than on something more prosaic, like well, stocking up on meat for the freezer?  Doesn't the music count for something, surely?  Perhaps it is the moral lesson taught by "The Ant and the Grasshopper", taught in school, an indoctrination on the values that should be most important.  Music seems to be aligned with the fleeting sort of sustenance, while budgeting is about keeping the body whole.  Dear little ant, on the these cold, dark, winter days, do you count your blessings, or do you yearn for the sound of the fiddle?  Oh dear. 
Meanwhile, my chimes are singing madly of spring...

Paintings by Janet Fish.  In my favourite picture, the one above, a welcome.  I  like the fish vase, the nest with the tiny blue egg, the geese flying past.  If one could be reincarnated, perhaps a goose would be the best choice. In the air, following the warmth of the sun. In the painting below, offerings, set off by the glassware, dazzling the eyes.

SPRING EARTH

Somewhere it is always spring--
here, too, perhaps
within these barren trees.
The thought, the idee fixe
the twig to be
outlasts the snowstorms.
Its double helix symphony
sleeps on in xylem,
unravels in sequestered leaves.
Some seeds refuse to sprout
until a winter has seasoned them
(wise monarchs outlive
  their enemies).
Earth thaws.
  Tendrils reach out
    beneath me.
Seed's urge unjackets me,
soaks me to root in run
  through falling rain.
I taste the sky:
  lime and raw iron,
  phosphorus and calcium,
inhale the animal sweetness of air,
soak up the sunlight,
open a cotyledon eye,
banish the frost
in bacchanalian riot.
It is time! It is time!

Brett Rutherford