Change Your Clocks, Not Your Garments

It is a strange bargain we strike with ourselves this time of year, as if time and light were really interchangeable, as if either were truly measurable. But somehow it seems to work. What is an hour of sleep to the luxury of later sunsets, of lengthening evenings that hasten the equinox? What is spring break but a dream of summer, anyway?

It is a false dream, surely. Here in New England snow still blankets the ground and the wind blows cold from Canada. The month of March is mud-time and flood-time. And we are only paying ourselves back for the hour we grasped too greedily in fall. But there is still hope. Perhaps the true light is on its way.