emergence past there's a fenced in open pit with a bunch of pipes sticking up at odd angles -- they're occasionally adjusted as part of a bug city building project -- beside the sidewalk in an oddly shaped unclaimed grassy area on one of my normal routes. in the fall, a hand made card, likely put together by a toddler at a nearby daycare perhaps for an elder at an adjacent seniors home, fell in and yet surprisingly maintained its integrity throughout rains, early snows, melts, and occasional pipe fiddlings. for over a month the pit has been largely filled with snow (except for occasional unknown work requiring it to be partially shovelled out), and i desperately await spring to see how fares this lost memento, and if it emerges at all from the slow heaving of winter's passage. 220206 ... past the snow is melting, the space where the hole is slowly emerging into its shaded glory (with the morning sun blocked by tall construction equipment and idling dump trucks performing the cut before the cover, the afternoon by a couple stubborn spruce, and evening by a condo tower). but despite the slowness of the unveiling, there's a curious suprise: the corners of a plywood board stretching to the sky as the remaining snow bends the glued flakes into the pit. perhaps the card has survived, saved by someone seeking to shovel less. 220317 ... past i tried to peak under the planks covering the pit, but the crew directing traffic looked askance at me, so i hurried along. all i saw in the crack between the broken sidewalk and plywood was dried brown leaves. 220420 ... past the ending of this is fairly anticlimactic. instead of a pit collecting stories, keepsakes, and the art of toddlers, since the spring there's been a standard utility access box with grass around it. 220826 ... past the snow melted slowly, and then all at once like our multitudes of dreams collapsing into a soggy reality. then, just as slowly and quickly, up through the insulating layer of dead and decaying leaves, sprouted lively green shoots from garlic planted before the snows. 230414 what's it to you? who go blather from