Sprung

Winter is putting on a last-ditch stand but in a losing retrograde action. This week I saw a pair of whitewings trying on a sorry little nest in the ash tree out front. Whitewings build flimsy nests at best, and this one's a leftover from last year. Out on the corner, there's a mocker that runs long, lovely solos late into the night. If he were on the bedroom side of the house, I could be irate with him, but, as it is, I simply admire his art. All day today, there's been a drop-dead-red cardinal hanging around on a branch of the big mesquite. You could drop his picture into a magazine spread of birds-of-paradise and he wouldn't be out of place. He's that gaudy. Friend wrote that a kid was going toward Mexico to meet spring on the way up here. I used to make Laredo runs in the spring for just that purpose. Eat a little goat meat, play the ponies and pups when that track was running, buy a jug. If we spent a couple of days there, when we were homeward bound we'd find spring a bit north of where we passed it on the way down.