what if spring were static?

Spring came early here. The white petals of the pear trees have mostly fallen. The pinks and purples of cherry and iris, the golden yellow of forsythia, are sparse now. Daffodils are gone. Red tulips are drooping. Greens range from lime to olive to emerald to forest. Dark brown tree trunks are more prominent.

Early this morning the sky was blue, but it quickly filled up with shades of grey. When I gazed out my east-facing window, taking note of these colors, an undulating band of blue, with just a little pink, remained above the massing clouds.

The window of my house is mullioned, so what I see is a grid of vertical rectangles—white painted strips of wood in between. As I stood there thinking what to put in this collage, it struck me that while spring moves ever on, petals falling even as I watched, any one moment is a frozen slice of Time. "What if spring were static?" I wondered. "What if I could push 'pause'?" As if in tune with my thoughts, the Talking Heads' song "Heaven" came on the radio: "Oh heaven/ Heaven is a place/ A place where nothing/ Nothing ever happens."

So the ingredients of this collage, while reflecting the transient spring colors, are from photos of fairly permanent objects: fabric, feathers, resin, shell, glass, pottery, stone.