Juxtapositions right now

There's a strange vibe that surrounds this season. I mean, when else would I possibly blunder onto a mysterious scene like this? What other time of year is such a mix of light and dark, beginnings and endings?


It's not changing the subject to say that the turkey vultures are back. To tell you the truth I'm happy to see them, these intelligent, misunderstood animals who leave before the weather gets cold and return now to soar and play in the warm thermals high above.

Through a screen of fragile alder tree catkins I watched a vulture sunning his wings atop a snag, soaking up the rare spring sunshine with all of his might. Seeing these enormous carrion-eaters above the quickening April landscape is a strange life-death juxtaposition.

Life and death all at once: how very very Easter-ish. Like this pile of slash that somebody dumped in the woods behind our house over the winter.

The cherry branches strewn in a heap on the ground have no idea that they're dead. They're in full bloom, and I gathered an armful to take home.

The edge between light and dark is never so poignant as it is right now, on the cusp of spring.

Still, citizen sparrow, this vulture which you call
Unnatural, let him but lumber again to air
Over the rotten office, let him bear
The carrion ballast up, and at the tall Tip of the sky lie cruising. 
Then you'll see
That no more beautiful bird is in heaven's height,

No wider more placid wings, no watchfuller flight;
He shoulders nature there, the frightfully free,

The naked-headed one. Pardon him, you
Who dart in the orchard aisles, for it is he
Devours death, mocks mutability,
Has heart to make an end, keeps nature new.

From "Still, Citizen Sparrow" by Richard Wilbur