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 33^rd 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