To listen to this post (please excuse Bonnie’s snores in the background):
This morning the sky is the bluest blue and the trees dress early. I look out the bathroom window as I brush my teeth. I’m on the second floor, peering over the back yard, far into the meadow behind our house. From this bird’s eye view I see the maple is taking on her early leaf flocking, a soft magenta down where buds begin to unfold. And the pussy willow dons a cottony ragtop where the sun first touches her in the morning. All the fruit trees that hide in the meadow most seasons are beginning their conspicuous bloom.
As I run the brush through my hair, I remember when this land was clear and freshly mowed, when Mrs. Casto would ride her lawnmower over to our fence to say hello as my boys played on their swing set. Now, it is a wild thing, a true meadow no longer. But the memory still lives in my mind, and I must correct it for the reality of the thing. Now it is more a meadow-woods—fruit trees spilling out over brambly earth.
As I look on, the robins sing their morning songs and I think what a gift that brambly meadow-woods must be to them. I wonder what it feels like to peer at the world between branches lit with the light of a thousand white blossoms. And then I think, why not find out?
I scramble downstairs, grab the camera, hop the fence, and go out to stand under the earth’s awakening.
I brave the sticker bushes and pokey weeds and find the place where the deer bed down beneath the trees. I sit on a cushion of wild violets, recline my head on a pillow of moss. And overhead? A white-blossomed canopy is framed up against blue sky. The sun breaks through the branchy chuppah all at once and I am held in warm hands. The breeze stirs the trees as I lay, cupped and happy, and a shower of petals falls over me—white mingled with purple on my bed and I breathe the fragrance of beauty.
The coming of spring is nothing short of a miracle most years, but when spring arrives a wee bit early? This is cause for celebration. I lose myself for a time in the slow-opening of a forsythia bloom, the way a branch offers a promise—prophesies. I try not to think about the possibility of a late-season freeze.
Isn’t this hope? Giving myself fully to this moment?
Annie Dillard says,
“ ... beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”
I am there. I am here. For just this moment, I will witness the miracle of spring.
Where are you finding beauty today?
a calming benediction to a busy, productive day. thank you, Laura ...
This is simply divine, Laura. I love listening to you read, especially when you write about places I can only imagine. I've lived my whole long life in Florida, where the changes in seasons is at best subtle, especially in the part of Florida where we live. There is much beauty here, too, but it's not the dramatic seasonal changes you experience. When I listen to your sweet voice, I can close my eyes and imagine I'm right there with you on that "cushion of wild violets."