When I step out the front door it is hard to believe. February. Can this be February? A giant forsythia in full bloom. Birds singing nesting songs as if it were April. Bud scales peeling, falling; it should be snow. I am adamant in my disbelief. I insist there is something wrong.
But then I succumb, at night I succumb. To the frogs.
Their song is so loud it becomes silent. Or silencing like the huge velvet drapes in a theater absorbing the audiences’ expectant murmurs.
When you live in a swamp you feel like a member of the Addams Family. Frog song becomes seductively symphonic, as do coyote yips, or the basso profundo of the barred owls. The blinding darkness, on cloudy nights, makes your ears larger, makes your sinewy joins vibrate with song. I can not go to bed without standing in the absorbing whirr of Spring’s arrival. For a moment, or two I believe. It is too real to deny.
As I lie in bed, “Finally,” I say, still winter weary, and a bit cranky with an alder pollen headache. The invisible frogs ringing like bells, fleshy wide-eyed and leggy bells, invisible bells of the blackness. Their song dropping meticulously, their song, like a strong rain on the skylight, lulling me to sleep. Lulling me into belief.