While on a train to Kiel

Travelling up north
Rapeseed fields and lakes with swans
A poem passes by.

Yes, hallelujah!

While gazing out the train window at the passing rapeseed fields, I wonder how that bright yellow seems to reach up into the blue of the sky. It is as if the yellow of those fields, together with the sun’s rays, transforms the eggshell blue-grey of the winter sky and punches it with a hallelujah: spring is here!

Photo by Gianmarco Avigni on Unsplash

Such a blue sky

Buds, buds, buds, and buds
Hallelujah, it's spring
Face turned to the sun.

Off on an adventure

Raps fields roll away

As the sun peeks behind clouds

I ride the bus north.

(Written nearly two months ago.) 

Evidence that spring is coming

Bleak grey rainy day
Broken by an explosion
Magnolia blooms.

Happiness bubbling up from inside

It is warm enough
To find a quiet corner
With the sun, my friend.

A surprise while doing my early morning walk

Swans building their nest
A mesh of leaves and branches
Their hidden secret.  

Farewell to winter

Buds, beautiful buds
Outside my window, they're born
My heart is aglow. 

Photo by Theo Onic on Unsplash

The stubbornness of youth

Cold morning today

Teenagers still wear T-shirts

Since spring has started. 

Glad to be safe at home

Black clouds like bullies
Birds fly low in the sky
The next storm rolls near.

Only one up early this morning

Dawn slides back along
The invisible steal line
Daylight savings time.

It snowed last night

Field of crocuses
Spots of purple and orange 
Shine through white blanket.

Wanderlust

Peek out the window
the full moon sits on rooftop
Where are you, my friend? 

Eyes - Postcards I

the tender spring leaves
of my garden hedge
cradle the skeleton of a
lone bird dying in winter

Springtime

Spring has arrived. Well, to be honest, we've only seen only brief glimpses of this wonderful season to date. It is one of the most lovely seasons in northern Germany, because the losing of winter to the fullness of summer is drawn out over many months.

The weddings have started. The crocuses have blossomed. We are planning our summer holidays. And, lastly, the times of political rallies and demonstrations has come.

Yesterday, we had one of our city's most insipid and intensely anticipated "political rallies" of every spring. The fundamental right party (read neo-Nazis) petitions the town for the privilege of holding a rally. Since this right to "hold rally" is a part of any democracy, no matter that everyone knows these people political agenda poorly veils their despicable ideology, they are given the right to meet in public one Saturday in March.

What happens is an interesting study of the ludicrous. Two or three hundred people of this fundamental right party (read neo-Nazis)come to attend the rally. Two or three thousand people come to protest the rally. The protesters belong to all sorts of political parties or are just concerned citizens. Two or three hundred extreme left (read punks) come to stir up problems with the protesters and police. And, there are thousands of police lining the streets, trying to keep order.

The rally takes place in a small marketplace on the outskirts of Luebeck. The party members are given the rights to speak in public for half an hour. Most years, the protesters try to figure out means so that the people speaking at the rally can't be heard. This year, the nearby church took matters into their own hands and rang their church bells throughout the half hour. Legally, they were not allowed to do this (public ordinance). But, oddly, despite thousand of attending police present, none of them stopped the church from doing this.

After the rally, for the next five or six hours, riot reigns; the right try and beat up on the left, the left on the police, and everyone else hopes that their presence will restore peace. We have helicopters, riot police by the thousands, chained off streets, and endless escalations needed to be seen to. The costs! Ah, springtime. It's hard to explain.

Returning to Spring

In the ten days we were away, spring came to Luebeck. The magnolia trees in front of the city hall have blossomed. They are always the second trees to blossom. The first is a certain crab apple tree on a sunny bend of the canal down the street from where we live.

What I love about springtime in Germany is the long drawn out brilliance of it all. Coming from Montreal where spring sometimes occurs instantaneously between a late snow storm and the first heat wave, this slow progression of blossom over weeks and weeks, is precious.

Got to get my jetlag body off to work this morning. I think I'll take an extra long route through the community garden allotments and see whether that helps.

Spring Teaser

Oh, what a marvellous day. A spring day. What is more to say.

Spring, spring, oh what a beautiful thing is spring!

I brought along my camera on my bicycle ride to work this morning to photograph the explosion of spring we are presently experiencing in Luebeck.

Usually, we have what I define as a Slow Spring. Somewhere, towards the end of February or beginning of March, some perennials stick up their heads about the ground. During the following weeks, until mid-May, there is a gradual scintillating dance of spring. It is truly lovely to witness.

This year, for whatever reason, we’ve experienced what I call a Canadian Spring. Monday snow, Friday summer. OK, ok, a slight exaggeration, but we really were caught by surprise.