Spring

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of winter. The short days and the cold weather are no friends of mine. But, ah, Spring.

My first sing of Spring was that the amaryllis that my friends Maria and Michael sent me after their November visit started blooming last week. For months I watched the hard bulbs do nothing. Slowly the green shoots started forming and growing. Then, suddenly, a week or so ago, beautiful red flowers appeared. I look at them and smile (and whisper words of thanks for this wonderful gift from my friends).

I love watching the buds forming on the trees, listening to the birds, feeling the warmth in the air (even amid some remaining cold days), and seeing the sunshine. I love that I can take long walks and bicycle rides rather than going to the gym. I look, I listen, I feel – and I smile, and give thanks to God for spring.

I’ve written before of my love of the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Not being a poet myself, I share today his poem, Spring:

Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

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