It's as if Spring can’t get traction on the ice of winter, stuck with its feet in the muck and can’t pull itself loose. Here in the hills there's little green as the last ice is melting slowly,  so very slowly. But not all is somnolent. The birds are singing up a storm and the bog echos with the calls of the geese.

Spring comes in on quiet feet.
Soft light beckons me
outside where a loamy breeze carries the tang of wood fires, still,
and squishy sod underfoot covers hard, as yet unyielding earth,
where sweet rain coaxes buds to swell while ducks chatter high overhead,
well on their way to destinations unknown.

Gentle but wild.
Here, birds fly in crescendo from tree to tree to tree.
In the tall pine a woodpecker taps with increasing urgency,
tomorrow he’ll be tattooing a love song on the barn roof.
The bog is a congress of geese disputation.

This morning blows my intentions for the day as I simply yearn to embrace more fully:
the earth, the now, all I haven’t done yet in this life, that which is past.

If I were a woodpecker, all I’d need is a barn roof.
But I am a sitting duck for wistfulness, missing, oughts, and should haves;
full of feeling not-good-enough and wish I had;
and full of maybe I could yet.

Not much to do about something I didn’t have the gumption to do at nineteen,
so I just stand there and sniff and sniff and sniff.

And somehow turn back inside soothed, more me, and more at peace,
ready to work some more on the maybe I could yets.

The software I use for photo editing has become unusable with the latest upgrade, and I imagine there are frantic engineers at Apple trying to find a way forward. Actually, I don’t just imagine that, I talked to one of them the other day.

As I learn to use the unbelievably non-intuitive Lightroom program, it feels as if my photography is stuck in the mud along with Spring. American optimism would have me say this will bloom into something better than what was. Well there ya go. To order any of these as greeting cards or framed 8 x 10 prints, check them out in the Galleries. If you want them in some other way, talk to me.

The Gentling 4 ( 5 x 7 card and 8 x 10print)

The Gentling 3 ( 5 x 7 card and 8 x 10print)

The Gentling 5 ( 5 x 7 card and 8 x 10print)

The Gentling 6 ( 5 x 7 card and 8 x 10print)

The Gentling 2 ( 5 x 7 card and 8 x 10print)

The Gentling 1 (card only)

The Gentling 7 ( 5 x 7 card and 8 x 10print)

The Gentling 8 ( 5 x 7 card only )