Dear March, Come In!

For those not familiar with the poetry of Emily Dickenson (or the song cycle by Aaron Copland that my parents recorded for the composer back in the 70’s), the rest of it goes:

Dear March, come in!
How glad I am!
I looked for you before.
Put down your hat—
You must have walked—
How out of breath you are!
Dear March, how are you?
And the rest?
Did you leave Nature well?
Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
I have so much to tell!

I got your letter, and the bird’s;
The maples never knew
That you were coming,—I declare,
How red their faces grew!
But, March, forgive me—
And all those hills
You left for me to hue;
There was no purple suitable,
You took it all with you.

Who knocks? That April!
Lock the door!
I will not be pursued!
He stayed away a year, to call
When I am occupied.
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come,
That blame is just as dear as praise
And praise as mere as blame.

It’s a sweet little poem, and as a kid I was tickled at the thought of someone talking to a month like a long-lost friend at their door.

With the new month has come a bunch of new opportunities for Pam, and I’m glad that she is probably going to be busy with work for the next few months, at the very least. As for me, I’m finally feeling fully recovered from the exertions of the Gamelan concert at the Museum of Anthropology. We’ve both got bus passes now, and we’re not afraid to use them! With Spring indeed arriving (flowers and budding trees showing up everywhere), I’m hoping we’ll get a cloudless weekend day to take a trip to one of the gardens south of us (the Vandusen Botanical Garden on 33rd Avenue or Queen Elizabeth Park, which is nearby there just to the East).

I’m pleased to see that someone finally did a bit of a Google Mashup with some of the major bus stops and lines for Vancouver. Too bad it doesn’t do any of the locals, but it is nice to see where the Skytrain intersects with the other lines to the east of us, as well as where the CanadaLine (Rapid Transit system going in for the Olympics with a great deal of cries of pain and gnashing of teeth) will be in 2010.

written while listening to:
Tubin - Three Pieces for Violin and Piano (1933) - i. Sostenuto ” by Arvo Leibur, Violin, Vardo Rumessen, piano