Sunlight on the Garden Hardens and Grows Cold

I am always out of sync, a day late and a dollar short. Here it is in February and we're getting our first true winterlike weather and I'm posting pictures of last summer's flowers. This time of year it's so grey and dismal out. Coming from the South where the winter lasted all of about a month, maybe two, I find these 6 months of bleakness rather daunting.
I try to think, "Oh, won't it be nice to be forced inside where I can work on inside projects!" That's true, but on the other hand, I always get a nasty cold and just as I get over it, it turns in to another and then another until it's April and all I've been is crotchety and foul tempered and accomplished nothing. Did I also mention I always fall down on the ice? I mean "bust your patootie" fall down! "Smack your head on the frozen sidewalk" fall down! "Lie there for a minute because you might have broken something" fall down!
But then spring arrives and it is so beautiful here. I call my family down South and they are in the throes of a heat wave and a drought. "And the humidity," they say, "you won't believe the humidity!"
So I think, "Oh, I'm so glad I'm in the Northeast and the winters aren't really that bad. The snow is beautiful and the fire in the woodburning stove truly is lovely."
Then winter returns and I think, "What the hell was I thinking! I should have been job hunting down South rather than toiling in the garden."
Well, that's my cycle. One day I might return from whence I came, but I must wait at least 4 more years until I am vested in my retirement plan. How's that for harsh reality! Until then I have to make due with gazing wistfully at last year's blossoms.

And since I am on the topic of melancholia, this is another one of my favorite poems. I think it is particularly bittersweet knowing he wrote it to his wife who had just left him and the country was heading for war. I don't know if it saddens me or comforts me to think of all those lives that came before mine. People who were equally as complex and passionate about life as we are and all trace of them is gone, except for the few who left something behind that the world determined worthy of saving.

The Sunlight on the Garden
The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold;
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.

The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying

And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.

-- Louis MacNeice