The timid hares throw daylight fears away*

on unexpected offerings

*from John Clare’s poem “Hares at Play.”

A couple of weeks ago our family—all three dogs in tow, one for each of us (our familiars in ways other than witchcraft)—headed south to a favorite lake. Despite that it was mid-May, the lake was still mostly a slurry of frozen surface shimmering in breaks of sun. Despite such reluctant ice, there was still a sense that the turn to spring was real. There were new calls of birdsong among the trees—warblers and varied thrushes announcing the season, despite little evidence of green life beginning to emerge.

Still, we looked for small signs of plants stirring among the newly revealed remnants of last autumn—grasses brown and still matted, scatterings of leaf litter, recovering from the weight of long snow. As if the lands have to revisit where they left off before winter took hold, before they can fully awake to green and spring. We did find small drabas—so delicate and slight, blooming shyly among the rocks of a south-facing slope. And while looki…