vernal equinox

"Spring this year couldn't come too soon—and it didn't. It took its time-melting at its own pace, over running ice—blocked sewer drains, swelling the Humber River and the Don River stretching to the lake. The sound of the city was of trickling water. Have you ever smelled this city at the beginning of spring? Dead winter circling still, it smells of eagerness and embarrassment and, most of all, longing."– Dionne Brand.