Spring is here

Finally, it's spring. Almost 70 degrees, the air is warm, sweet, full, promising, and graced with birdsong. The light is brighter than it has been for months and we blink like animals coming up from hibernation. The street buzzes, everyone's out for a walk. Outside the barbarshops on Amsterdam Avenue, the Dominicans dance next to their parked cars, the car stereos blaring salsa.

(I refer of course to people from the Dominican Republic; the Dominican friars at Notre Dame on Morningside Avenue are not dancing next to their parked cars, the car stereos blaring salsa. They are, I imagine, preparing for the Friday Via Crucis. They are not from the Dominican Republic; they are from Poland.)

One hours' lost sleep this weekend and we shall begin the long days, the evening sun high over the Hudson, the stirrings of urban wildlife in Riverside Park. Every glorious spring I ask myself how the hell I ever got through winter.