Hope springs

The chinook is blowing. Unlike Laura, I wasn't woken in the middle of the night be the soft dripping of water, icicles melting off the roof and forming streams to join rivers flooding in the night. Instead the street noise holds off the whisper of the water but I can see the spreading stain of wetness on the sidewalk, the imperceptible sagging of the snowbanks. I can walk with my head up, my nose warm, in running shoes and without gloves. I can't feel the air but it's coming through, unmistakably, a spring thaw in February. I don't know my downstate weather patterns well enough to hope for permanence, but perhaps I will be the fool anyway. Last night I dreamt of ultimate again.