March Hares and Airs

March is a month of transition, you could say.  March was the first month of the year under the Roman calendar since it's the beginning of spring.  It was also the start of the military campaigning season and therefore it got the name March from the Roman god of war, Mars. 

Having the god of war as a namesake is rather appropriate for the month generally.  The weather is rather turbulent in March.  In north Texas the wind blows pretty much non-stop at this time of year.  We used to take the kids kite flying in the park a lot during March and April.  In grade school in Wisconsin we learned the expression, "If March comes like a lion, it'll leave like a lamb" or vice-versa.  In Poland they have this expression, "W marcu jak w garncu." (It's pronounced: v MAHR-tzu yahk v GAHRN-tzu.  It rhymes.) It means "In March as in a pot."  In other words, everything's all mixed together.

There's a British expression, "Mad as a March hare," which relates to the excitable habits of hares during spring breeding season and is used to describe anybody acting in a peculiar or unpredictable manner.  I can attest that my teenaged students act a little crazier than normal this time of year.  I put it down to a combination of the now 6 month old school year, a long winter and the little hint of spring in the air.

The Daffodil, the flower of March

Baseball spring training is well under way in Arizona and Florida in March, too.  That thrilled me as a kid and it still does.  Hope springs eternal for baseball fans - especially in spring.  Even if a World Series title is unrealistic for the upcoming season (and yet, who knows?) everybody thinks their team will at least improve over the previous year's performance.

As I write this post our snow is melting fast in Poland.  I know it'll snow again before it's all said and done, but this current thaw puts me in mind of a short poem by Edward Thomas. 

Thaw

Over the land half freckled with snow half-thawed

The speculating rooks at their nests cawed,

And saw from elm-tops, delicate as a flower of grass,

What we below could not see, Winter pass.

 

 



Edward Thomas is another of my favorites.  His poems are typically about the English countryside.  As a university undergraduate he decided to earn his living by writing and early in his writing career he reviewed as many as 15 books a week.  He wrote mainly literary criticism, biographies and essays and only turned to poetry late in his short life.  He enlisted in the British Army during World War I and was killed by a shell blast on April 9, 1917 at the age of 39.  He was survived by his wife Helen and their two daughters.