Seasonal Drama

by Jean Roberta

“All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey.”

Alas! Our Mother has died of grief, and we shall die too. The Lord of the Dead stole her daughter, and now the Mother is too distracted to feed her human children. Death has conquered the land of the living.

Why do we have to go to work when the temperature is 40 degrees below zero? Why did anyone ever think the Canadian prairies were fit for human habitation?

In Northern climates, we celebrate some holiday near the time of the Winter Solstice to comfort ourselves. The hours of daylight are short, it’s cold, the land that once grew crops is covered with snow, so we party hearty to compensate. We’re probably insane.

The missing university student has been found. He had some drinks with friends in the campus pub, then decided to walk home. He passed out on his way, the snow covered him, and when the search party found him, it was too late. He will sleep off his hangover forever, and his family will never be the same. All the other students (and many faculty members) are relieved that it didn’t happen to them. And we’re all keeping their fingers crossed that it never does.

Finally! Almost all the snow has melted, and there are buds on the trees! It’s a miracle. On the ironically-named non-holiday called Good Friday (a day to spend away from work or school, not celebrating), Christians have traditionally contemplated suffering, death, the winter that comes to every life. Then on the following Sunday, they go joyfully to a church decorated with lilies, and come home to eat candy and boiled eggs with their children. Presumably, Christ has been rescued from his suffering, and has been granted eternal bliss: springtime forever. Believing in this requires a lot of faith.

Like survivors of trauma whose memories are unreliable – or who bury the event somewhere below the level of consciousness – we tend to forget, over and over again. When the green leaves of summer change colour, we admire the canopies of red or golden leaves overhead, and try not to think about what they signify: the death of plant life as the weather grows colder. We watch the Canada geese organizing themselves for their long journey, then rising into the sky in chevron after chevron, heading south. So many Canadians imitate the geese by catching planes to warmer places that they have a label: Snowbirds.

If we have to wait out the winter, we use every available means to stay warm and distract ourselves. We avoid considering the fact that humans aren’t very tough compared to other mammals (including bunnies and gophers), and low temperatures can kill our vital organs after our extremities (fingers and toes) have been destroyed. Some of us have a minor condition that mimics the death of the extremities. It’s called Reynaud’s Syndrome, and it usually seems to affect little old women (short, relatively thin, over 50) who have lived in the North for so long that our blood takes it time returning to numbed fingers and toes. So while we huddle in blankets indoors, we can watch our waxy-looking fingers or toes slowly recover feeling and life.

Many of us have had close calls, but we survived. We’re all right, Jack.

Spring brings amnesia. The Mother is alive again! Her daughter has returned to her! We can imagine Demeter and her girl Persephone frolicking in the green wheat, blessing the newly-planted gardens and waking up the perennials that lay dormant all winter. The sun is bright, and the air is growing steadily warmer. Our Mother loves us again.

Summer is too much of a good thing. The sun blazes, flowers bloom, people who are stuck indoors turn on the air conditioning, and those who can get away rush to the nearest large body of water. If there’s no ocean nearby, a lake or even a river will do. For a few months, it’s hard to believe that all the green lawns, fields of grain, and dusty vacant lots were ever covered by snow. Threatening weather now takes the form of thunderstorms that can produce hailstones the size of golfballs. An hour of these things pelting a wheat field can flatten a large crop, which is the main reason why farmers buy crop insurance. For anyone who isn’t a farmer, thunder, lightning and hail are dramatic events that punctuate a summer of outdoor fun. The sting of icy little hailstones can even feel refreshing after the heat of the day.

Too soon, the air turns cooler, the leaves start changing colour, then they fall to the ground and form crunchy carpets. The cycle continues, and we discover, once again, that the conditions we’ve grown used to never stay the same.

It’s probably just as well that when the livin' is easy, most of us seem unable to remember the times when we thought we might not make it.

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Animal Attraction

By Michelle Houston

Ah spring.

When someone asks me what first comes to mind when they mention the word spring it isn’t college kids going on break, or trees and flowers blooming, nor is it the sudden and quick showers that the Midwest US is blessed/cursed with.

It’s animals in the mood for love. Yep, that’s the first thing that comes to mind when someone says ‘spring’.

I guess I should explain…

As any parent with a child who loves going to zoos knows, spring at a zoo is just like spring in the wild. Animals get, well, frisky, and they don’t exactly care if someone is watching. My family has visited the zoo several times a year ever since my daughter was about 3 or 4.

One really memorable event occurred a few years ago. We visited the zoo during the early spring, and animals were doing as frisky animals do. Loving the meerkats as she does, my daughter wanted to sit and watch them. Unfortunately at the time, they were “wrestling” so we had to move on.

(This is a legit picture, and that’s its tail – you naughty minded people!) *snicker*

Image copyright Michelle Houston.

The zebras were especially playful chasing and dancing all over their pen. Nice to see them moving around, not so nice when the male caught up to the female.

Thankfully, the lions were separated, and she was able to enjoy her favorite animal without nature getting in the way.

Of course, the day was filled with innocent “what are they doing?” kinds of questions as we continued through the zoo. But it wasn’t as bad for me as it was for the poor teacher who was leading her students past the meerkat habitat while there was some kind of a group orgy going on. One wide-eyed little girl seemed to have some clue, and I about died laughing at some of the chatter going on as they were heading past us.

I still remember some of the questions I fielded … and my husband’s snickering about it. Big, bad, erotica writer blushing and stammering while trying to answer, yet not answer, questions about sex. Thankfully she was easier to put off with a vague answer, unlike some of the kids in that class. I still shudder thinking about it.

Oh yes, spring brings to mind the friskiness of animals as they do what animals do.

So I guess it’s appropriate that the beginning of my latest series, Animal Attraction, got its start in spring. It’s about male shifters, who allow their inner animals to play ... in a very frisky way. This time though I shouldn’t have to explain anything to anyone. Which is nice, because I still occasionally blush and stammer.

Animal Attraction: Taming the Wolf

Gay werewolves just didn't happen naturally. Ben had accepted that he would quite possibly live the rest of his life alone. Then one day Nathan, another rogue-made werewolf, turns up on his doorstep and he finds that maybe there is a mate for him after all, if he can teach the younger man how to tame his inner wolf.

Available for purchase at:

http://www.king-cart.com/Phaze/product=Michelle+Houston/exact_match=exact

The next two Animal Attraction stories have been accepted and scheduled. Embracing the Leopard is coming out in June, and Unleashing the Leopard in August.

Michelle’s website:

www.michellehouston.com

Michelle’s blog: Captive Dreams of an Erotic Pen

http://eroticpen.blogspot.com

Michelle’s Newsgroup:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/michellehouston/

Erotic Designs by Michelle:

http://eroticdesign.eroticpen.net

Phoenix Rising Authors:

www.isleofphoenix.com

Explore the Infinite Possibilities with the Phoenix Rising Authors:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Infinite_Possibilities/

Spring - Rapacious Devourer of Men

By Helen E. H. Madden

Let me tell you something about Spring.

It's not about renewal or hope. It's not about flowers or fluffy bunnies or baby birds. It's not about allergies and pollen. It's not about the crazed and dazed state of fever people slip into as they slip off layers of clothing and run amok in fields of daisies and such crap.

It's about little monsters that wake up hungry and ready to feed.

You see, every year around the end of summer, beginning of fall, we get one of these in our backyard...

Pretty, isn't it? A delightful little sack of horrors waiting to hatch. This little beauty will spend all of Autumn and Winter tucked away in some tiny corner of of the house, brooding and sheltering the creepy crawly delights inside. Sometime in the Spring, that mummified papery sac will burst open and out will stream a thousand or so baby monsters, each with eight legs a piece. They grow up to look something like this...

Our yard becomes the domain of at least one of these beauties every year, sometimes two. We call them Shelobs, they're so damned huge. After sleeping so long in that egg sac, they wake up so hungry, so the first thing they do is string their webs this way and that across our back deck. I can't tell you how many times I've walked out my back door and right into their traps, nearly strangled by those thick, heavy strands of sticky silk. I've been the big dinner that got away more times than I can count.

But I love these little darlings, these eight-legged freaks. They're such artists. Each web is a wonder to behold, and the way the Shelobs wait in the center, oh so patiently, for their prey to come to them is truly chilling to behold.

It's a feeling I understand all too well, for you see, spiders aren't the only things that wake up hungry in the Spring. After months of hiding inside the house, burrowing beneath blankets, shrouding myself in heavy sweaters and woolly socks, something hatches inside of me. It's a feeling that crawls through my belly and along my limbs, an uncontrollable need to feed my inner predator. One warm afternoon, I'll pull out my silken traps - a chemise, stockings, garter belts - and patiently lie in wait for my prey to appear. When he shows, I'm quick to pounce, tie him up and suck the life out of him until he's nothing but a shrivelled husk and I'm too satiated and drowsy to move. On that day, I can't say whether I have two legs or eight, but the effect is still the same.

Come Summer, the heat and humidity will whither my desire, and the predator inside me won't wake again until Autumn. Then I'll spin my webs again one last time before Winter forces me back into hibernation, chilled body buried beneath layers of clothing, heavy sweaters, woolly socks. I'll waste away until Spring.

And then I'll wake up hungry again.

Ensnared, Work In Progress by Helen E. H. Madden

Spring Fever

By Kim Dare.

It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! ~Mark Twain

I am either fortunate or strange, but I like every season in it's own way. Cwtching up under a patchwork blanket on cold nights through the winter. Summer dresses for the few warm days that grace the UK during the summer. The turning of the leaves in Autumn.

But spring is possibly my favourite.

This year more than any I can remember, I can feel that spring fever Mark Twain talked about bubbling away inside me. I want to do something, but I don't know what. I want a challenge, a change, a... just a something!

I want to get out pencils and start sketching again.

I want to dig out every poetry book in the house and remind myself of all the different verses I've been too busy to remember lately.

I find lyrics to a dozen different songs racing through my head at inappropriate moments, and I want to sing them out loud for no good reason.

Story ideas are flooding in too, and I want to write every single one of them - RIGHT NOW!

Patience and spring don't feel compatable right now, but do you know the most bizare thing of all? I also feel more relaxed about everything than I have for... for I don't actually know how long.

I want to do more things than I can ever get done in twenty life times. But right now, on the cusp of spring, every single one of those things seems possible. And maybe even more than that, it seems possible to do it all and still find time to just enjoy the journey.

I still haven't picked up a sketch pad, and I won't inflict my singing on you, but one of the poems I've been reminding myself of seems quite appropriate, so I will share that.

Leisure by W. H. Davies

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?—

No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Have a good spring everyone - and be sure to let me know if you are feeling the fever too :)

A poem for the season

by Lisabet Sarai

serenade
to this march day
of unlikely ardor
burning the senses
            brown.

unbuttonings
city-wide.
unloosing all
the summer armies
prematurely;
            town-ladies,
open-toed and
hoop-earringed.

hazy sky
smiles benign,
spills time.

blessings on
the taxi drivers,
hungry-eyed, and
meagre busboys
smiling, sweeping
deli doors
of sidewalk dust,
and every shirt-sleeved,
melting executive
             watching me
             watch myself
in the windows.

(March 4, 1974)

Happy Spring!