Words springing forth

I've been feeling some writer's block lately. Well, that's my excuse anyway. Each time I sit down at the computer I stare at it waiting for it to speak to me, or something. I go through these stints of profusity (actually that's not a word, but I think it should be, don't you? It's so much more elegant than "profuseness") where I can be cutting up an apple, for example, and I'm forming phrases and adjectives to best describe the event (thankfully, for the most part, I curtail my enthusiasm over such banality for the sake of my readers).

But over the last couple of weeks, my mind has ceased its word acrobatics and even potentially exciting topics have failed to get a rise out of me.

I have four words to say: Cab In Fev Er (which translates to "get me a Taxi to a somewhere Hot, it's an Emergency!")

Yes, I blame winter. Snow. Ice. Zero degrees. Cold feet. Blue hands. Kleenex. Pale skin. Vitamin D deficiency. Blah. I need some warmth, some color, some life, people!

I want green shoots to inspire me to roll out my own word tendrils. I want blue skies to clear the snow clouds from my brain. I want flowers to remind me to color my world with exciting sentences. I need the sun to defrost my writer's block. I want the birds to sing me new stories.

Spring reminds us all to start living again. We can finally walk down the sidewalk without risking death by ice puddle. We can almost hear the world coming back to life - the grass growing beneath the mud slick that will soon become a lawn again, the trees stretching their limbs preparing to put on their new suits of green, the birds rehearsing for their upcoming spring concert.

For me, spring is a start-over. Get out of the house, breath non-heated air, flex atrophied muscles, and finally expose the skin I have been hiding under five layers of clothing for the past six months. We're not quite there yet - it's only March 12 and any New Englander will tell you you can't safely start counting your spring chickens until about June 1. Easter bonnets around here come with fleece linings.

But it is in the air. The two feet of snow on the back deck has finally melted, revealing toys abandoned there last fall. Your breath doesn't freeze on the wind shield on the morning commute, and the afternoons require one less layer.

Now I am just waiting for inspiration to sprout with the seeds, motivation to arrive with the robins, and words to flow with the thawing rivers.