A Yellow Season

I am already missing flowers that have yet to open. Social workers describe anticipatory grieving in caregivers dealing with long illness. Perhaps this is anticipatory nostalgia. I have to catch myself at it, force myself to admire the clutches of daffodils now, while they are briefly blooming, and the tulips, even more briefly. In upstate New York, spring is a yellow season that gallops, once it finally gets going. And this one is a doozy. A week of unseasonably warm winds encouraged a lot of shrub and fruit tree blossoms to open. The trees are enveloped in a green-pink-white-red mist as tiny leaves and flowers emerge. Yesterday, my tulips were in bud; today they are in full bloom. If I’m lucky, they’ll last a few days, and then they will be petals on the ground. Yesterday, the grass was still partially in thatch; today it is lush and green, and I’m already thinking about future mowing. Spring moves so fast that each brand-new flower contains its own impending doom. Shadows cast by the sun are thickening, blurring around the edges. As daylight lengthens toward summer, it’s as if each float in a Carnival parade slips by. It’s the sun, I think, myself growing older and feeling time pass ever more quickly, unlike moonlight, which has no pace to speak of.