Robins and Spring

Today we woke up to Daylight Standard Time, the painful loss of a giant figure for our time, and four inches of fresh new snow. These three things have nothing in common except, as the Pope said in his previously quoted Letter to Artists, "the mysterious unity of things."

But that is leading me away from the robins. I told a friend a couple of days ago that I had yet to see a robin this spring. But as I look out now, there are about thirty robins milling around in the snow, just outside my window. I wonder if they are there to reassure me that spring will come. At the moment, I am less worried about spring coming than the snow going.