Photo by Phyllis Stokes
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper and Phyllis, wondered, with rest of the populace, what they did to deserve Mar. 20, 2022 with its first-day-of-spring perfection. In the warm hours of its sunny brilliance, there was an invitation to do something as participatory and extraneous as the sandhills’ mating dance.
The keeper and Phyllis visited the UW campus where the spring budding of youth took on a thousand machinations along the shore of ice-covered Lake Mendota. From the impatient sun bathers on the pier, to the hand-holding strollers, there was a great sense of embracing the season of magnificent renewal, however prematurely.
On the steps of a boat dock, a young couple sat with a pitcher of beer between them as the young man strummed a guitar and smiled at his tattooed girlfriend. By happenstance, the shadows of the keeper and Phyllis from a walkway above presented an inadvertent joining in of the scene.
The symbolism brought shadowy memories of other perfect spring days to the keeper and Phyllis. Never, however, could there be one as perfect as this one, which they and the rest of the populace deserved just by dint of being together and being there.
