Aconite, Persephone, and Words

Our Aconite is blooming, and it's so cheerful and triumphant, especially on this gray, gusty day.  Each March it emerges like Persephone from the underworld.  Of course, it also shrivels and retreats each year, just as Persephone returned, annually, to Hades. But if mythology is any consolation, there is always the promise that it will come back.   That is the joy of spring.  Is it spring? Tommy and I were thinking about this last night.  I thought this time between March and April should be called, "Sprinter."  But that puts spring before winter, so we decided maybe it should be called "Wring."  "Sprinter" has the advantage of suggesting that something (spring?) is going to come fast.  But there is a certain amount of implied distress and frustration in "Wring," and those of us here in Michigan sense that it is a word meant for us. It is about twisting and wrenching and squeezing, which is, after all, what we want to do to the sky.   We understand this vocabulary, just as we understand sleet and suffering.  It is our language. We must remember it, and we must also remember to look down.  In March, that is where we'll find sunshine, poking its yellow head through the leaves of last November.