At last....

Well, I seem to have let a month slip by without a blog entry. I didn't do my taxes either, so that can't be my excuse. Actually, I've been writing some software, which is great fun, and in many ways easier than prose. Yeats said he preferred composing poems to writing prose pieces. The problem with prose, he said, is that you are never done. I know what he means: if a poem is well-wrought there is a little, almost audible, click as it settles into place. With prose, though, you can fiddle endlessly.

When a program is finally worked into its—almost inevitable—shape it gives that "click", also. So I've had a series of pleasing clicks over the month, so pleasing that I forgot my blog. So how about a little fable for the upcoming spring equinox? I wrote it years ago, truth be told, but it has not yet seen the light of day, as far as I know...

The crow looked bleakly around. The thin snow swirled around him over the frozen ground, and the squirrels and rabbits and robins huddled in holes. He cawed in derision as the cold seeped through his ruffled feathers, and gobbled the shriveled meat from a burst hickory nut. A man, swaddled against the cold, hurried along the path, but the crow barely gave him a glance. It had come to this! No stores of corn to rob, no angry farmers to evade as he delighted in his cunning! Steel silos, deserted farms. Now he was just a tramp in the city, like all these other pitiful creatures. As if to punctuate this melancholy thought, a rat scuttled across the path and disappeared into some dry pondside weeds.

And the relentless barrenness! The crow knew that only he could bring the world out of this cold dark season, only he could raise the sun. But how? How could he bring on the rage of Man, that brought back the warmth? He flapped his wings until he was warm enough to fly, then lifted off and went circling about, looking for something, he knew not what. Then he saw it. It was a magnificent evergreen, glowing with colored lights, and with a great star on top. The crow knew what he had to do.

He flattened out his flight until he was skimming just at the tree’s top, and hit the star with his feet. It was whacked askew. He circled back, and hit it again. It fell, and the watching crowd gasped. Angry voices floated up to the crow. He flew away and waited.

Soon the star was back atop the tree, and the crow knew in his ebony heart that the hardest moment of his hard life had come. He cawed, almost lovingly, at the squirrel that watched him in wonder, then took off and circled the big gorgeous tree several times, waiting for a crowd to gather. He saw the man with the gun, and went straight for the star. As he hit it he heard the gun go off, then heard no more. As the crow spun to earth, he felt warm at last, and knew that Spring was on the way.Attribution...