. . . Then Comes Spring

I am urging spring along. It doesn’t really need my help, for already it is prying at winter’s shell to see if it might poke through. Only last Friday the warmth of day and cool of morning breeze lifted my spirits in anticipation of what is to come. Spring is hope, as God intended. I’ll not mourn winter’s death as I go about seeking buds and blooms.

And here I have found them in my own backyard, expected yet surprising. Reddish-purple buds beginning to split at their seams, like half-popped kernels of corn. Soon the tree will burst forth with flower, then leaf. First the Bradford Pears, then the Dogwoods, will come alive in a brilliant display of white and pink blooms. Every other bud and blossom and leaf and flower will follow.

The neutral landscape weathered and brown, like an old photograph, seeks to shed its weighty blanket for light, and life, and breath, fresh and new like spring.

So it is as the wild onions erupt from the hardened ground, green and wispy and pungent.

No, spring can't hide for long. Her secrets have already been gossiped across the land, and blossom by blossom, blade by stalk by leaf, she will appear in all her glorious splendor.

"The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven -
All's right with the world!"

Robert Browning