In spring, what does an old man's fancy turn to?

“In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,” Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote in “Locksley Hall,” his late 1830s poem.

OK, but what about an old man's fancy? What does it turn to?

Consider that I can see in my mind's eye my 25th year receding to the size of printed period. I think that qualifies me as old. So what the heck is my fancy — challenged as it may be — turning to these early spring days?

Well, lots of stuff.

Yes, thoughts of love, from time to time certainly (it beats most emotions on the quality scale). That's inevitable as I look around to see smiling people, young and old, enjoying sunny days warmer than those deep in December. They're walking hand in hand in neighborhoods and city parks, maybe with a leashed dog, an infant bundled up in a stroller, or jogging as they listen to music or a podcast, headphones over their ears.

On some days the air is silky and scented with the smell of flowers. My eyes are filled with the sight of white blooms on Bradford pear trees, pink ones on ornamental plum trees, yellow ones on forsythia. I also look for pale blue flowers hanging down on wisteria vines and glance at my mother's watercolor painting of wisteria, painted near Tokyo in the early 1950s. I wonder if she, in her early 30s then, was a happy mother of five small children and caretaker of an ambitious U.S. Army officer.

And there are memories of past loves — whether the relationships ended wonderfully but sadly or badly and sadly — come to mind or in a dream.

One was an actress and a good one, her eyes like emeralds, her hair auburn, her voice soothing, her laughter loud, pleasant and brassy, like the sound of a saxophone. There was love and lust, to be sure, under starlit nights in the Ventana Wilderness in Los Padres National Forest, her skin dark, glowing and washed clean, smoothed and warmed by bathing in nearby hot springs.

There are thoughts of past trips, too: Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Japan, Turkey, Morocco, Egypt, Spain, Italy, Scotland, Great Britain, Greece, France, Big Sur, California's Lost Coast, Yosemite National Park, Death Valley, the Grand Canyon, Los Angeles, New York City, Dallas-Fort Worth, and New Orleans. And a pending trip to the Netherlands and Belgium. Do I know where my passport is? Have I written out a packing list? Are my medications in order?

My thoughts turn annoying especially as one in particular rails against “mainstream media,” when he and his network are mainstream media —all you have to do is take one look at the cable news network's headquarters, at 1211 Sixth Ave., in New York City and know that is true.

Then there are thoughts about what to plant in a backyard garden in late April: potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, pole and bush beans, squash, herbs, flowers. Or watching the sun gradually climb higher into powder-blue skies every lengthening day and reading seed packages or the Western Garden Book for planting tips.

There is hope, lots of hope, too, and it comes despite the questionable end-of-days, woe-be-us headlines coming from certain cable news network anchors. My thoughts turn annoying especially as one in particular rails against “mainstream media,” when he and his network are mainstream media —all you have to do is take one look at the cable news network's headquarters, at 1211 Sixth Ave., in New York City and know that is true.

There, as I remember walking along the Manhattan avenue, is to see the opulence of grand modern architecture, and then understand the many millionaire news anchors inside who, one after the other, assail our nation's progressive social and political agendas but benefit from Ol' 45's 2017 tax cut.

And every time at this year, during tax time, my thoughts turn to how that legislation helped corporations and the rich — money they don't really need but only think they need — and rarely, if ever, do those same news anchors report on the plight of the American middle class, which is shrinking, the hard-fact numbers coming at time when democracy and the institutions created for its survival seem to be wobbling like our own spinning world.

Gripes aside, at this time of year I invariably recall some favorite poetry, including the general prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer's “Canterbury Tales” and T.S. Eliot's “The Waste Land,” because both begin with references to April and spring rain.

For the Chaucer (and I'll translate — or try to — into modern English): “When that April with its sweet fragrant showers/the dryness of March have pierced to the root,/And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such sweet liquid/By which power is engendered the flower.”

For the Eliot: “April is the cruelest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/Memory and desire, stirring/Dull roots with spring rain.”

But Chaucer, especially, seems to suggest (if you continue reading the prologue) that spring is a time to make a pilgrimage and seek the solace of meditation.

And so I will, too, but my travels will not be to areas of the United States where the April 8 total eclipse of the sun will begin at 11:42 a.m. EDT and end at 4:52 p.m. EDT.

But I know people who are traveling to states — from Texas and Oklahoma to Illinois and Indiana to New York and New Hampshire — where a full eclipse will be visible. (By the way, it is safe to look directly at the eclipse only during the brief period of totality. At all other times, you will need safety equipment such as “eclipse glasses” or a solar filter.)

On April 8, my thoughts will turn to my pending pilgrimage.