These are the signs of spring, the illuminations I have been waiting for. And its fresh, cool wind, striking my face, seems to carry new senses with it. It is beginning to be fragrant and full. It calls up in me a new alertness along with a new contentment. But underneath all these pleasant surfaces and scattered events, I feel the power of their origins. For all I can find and associate with spring, the romantic, welcome season, there are vastly more uncounted changes, unrealized ways of reaching up and out, responding to a new range of light and darkness. The protozoa tell me I have seen nothing yet as to fire. The migrant herring coming in at night say this April is ageless and dark. Everywhere around me, things deeply silent and unseen begin to share a proximity. They move in the waters, while they shoulder the dirt below ground. In the structure of their alliances, developed in measure and with appropriateness, is the co-ordination of the great globe as it spins in space. They respond to a power which not only defines the “spring” but will transform it and send it on its way. “_Frightened Away_” The swallows freely dip and fall and sail in high wild air, and as a southern surprise two adult turkey vultures soar low over the land, their wings like great flags, frayed at the tips. The cattail seeds begin to fly. Part of April’s cool progression, the tough-leaved Mayflowers blossom out of banks and brown leaf litter, with tiny pink and white flowers, deep cupped, strong and sweet of scent. On the twenty-fifth there is a big run of alewives in the brook. It is an event that attracts attention. Cars stop by. Small crowds gather and walk down to see the fish. This is not as great a day as it used to be, when salt herring counted heavily in the economic livelihood of Cape Cod, but it brings up remnant feelings. And the fish, after all, provide an open ceremony, even though the details of their natural or economic history may not be known to everyone. It is a spectacle worth leaving a car for, and might even tempt someone to leave his car for good, suggesting new roads and means of locomotion not yet considered. They mass in the shallow water of the brook, with flinty gleams showing on their backs and dorsal fins. Eyes staring, mouths gaping, turning and wheeling, the foot-long alewives move up through the fishways, obeying their great drive for fulfillment. Herring gulls gather above the water course by which the fish ascend through marshes and then fresh water to their spawning areas in the ponds. They circle overhead in the blinding sky, like a prodigal crown.