Too Nice

[rejectomorph]

Thrushes now sing through balmy afternoons and bees feed from fresh blossoms. The entire landscape luxuriates. At nightfall, the perfect moon rises and the cricket sings, accompanied by the chorus of frogs. None of this should be happening now. We should be damp and chilled under gray skies. It's February! I keep thinking of Pompeii. I'm sure we are about to be blindsided by some terrible disaster. This is a trick, a ruse to throw us off guard! By Friday we'll surely be buried under mounds of snow, the frogs frozen in their icy ponds, the bees huddling in their hives, the flowers dead, the ground littered with the corpses of silenced birds. This cannot last.