Spring is

Walks in the sun that is uncertain but warm, in a wind that is sometimes biting and sometimes playful.

Rain in torrents and wildness and small droplets and mist and rain that just threatens with low-hanging clouds.

Buds on trees and birds in flight and in song and hunting for food and sticks to build their nests. It's the incongruity of pigeons with sticks in their mouths, not because they think they are dogs, but because they are birds, too.

Small flowers blooming blue and purple and white, catching the eye because there is color again in a world that was grey and white and cold.

It's weather that allows for time spent outside, even with the reminder that winter is not long gone and you might want to keep moving. It's playgrounds and swingsets and exchanging your boots for sneakers and removing plastic from your windows. It's opening your windows wide and breathing in the air that your dwelling place has missed over the long winter.

It's hearing birdsong and trying to figure out where it came from. It's feeling that soon, _soon_, it'll be warm enough to forgo sweaters and wear skirts again, and sit down in the sun and have rain that is warm enough to stay in instead of hiding from.

Spring. It is.

Spring is

Walks in the sun that is uncertain but warm, in a wind that is sometimes biting and sometimes playful.

Rain in torrents and wildness and small droplets and mist and rain that just threatens with low-hanging clouds.

Buds on trees and birds in flight and in song and hunting for food and sticks to build their nests. It's the incongruity of pigeons with sticks in their mouths, not because they think they are dogs, but because they are birds, too.

Small flowers blooming blue and purple and white, catching the eye because there is color again in a world that was grey and white and cold.

It's weather that allows for time spent outside, even with the reminder that winter is not long gone and you might want to keep moving. It's playgrounds and swingsets and exchanging your boots for sneakers and removing plastic from your windows. It's opening your windows wide and breathing in the air that your dwelling place has missed over the long winter.

It's hearing birdsong and trying to figure out where it came from. It's feeling that soon, _soon_, it'll be warm enough to forgo sweaters and wear skirts again, and sit down in the sun and have rain that is warm enough to stay in instead of hiding from.

Spring. It is.