Rising sap

At the Brown brothers' wood, wanting to say damn the winter; but knowing spring does not declare oaths on arrival. It hinges on starkest death. After the snow-laden threshes, the reiterated cold grips, it is suddenly there, like the full recapturing of some once-forgotten memory, now incarnated beyond phantom logic. The lingering end of winter can be the worst part of it. The longing for the infinite associations of spring and its deepening banquet feast, summer (ferried to the mind in recollected cow lowings over clean, waist-high grass, the rain-sound bristling poplars and swallows lunging and rising over the vast inebriation of the fields' mown hay heat), can overextend itself, wanting to kick what is thawing. Nonetheless, I think the longing is good. But it should refrain from damning the winter.