First Spring's Faithful Return

Tell me, does the robin understand

what she is singing about at dawn,

that whole gorgeous insistence of song

rising before the sun has fully committed

to its own return?

🌸

Something has shifted.

You can feel it

moving through the open meadow,

that slow and tender loosening,

as if the earth itself

has exhaled after a long, difficult holding.

🌸

Yesterday there was only shadow.

Today, a crocus. Just one

violet and astonishing,

pushing its bright head up

through cold, reluctant soil,

as if to say I was always here.

I was only waiting.

🌸

And isn't that the whole lesson?

That life does not abandon us,

it simply rests.

That beneath every hard season

something warm and stubborn

keeps its own faithful calendar.

🌸

I walked out this morning,

and the light had changed

softer now, and longer,

full of that burnished gold

that only belongs to March.

🌸

A bee, the first bee, stumbled

through the new warmth

like a creature remembering

what it was made for.

🌸

I stood there.

I let the sun find my face.

🌸

Oh, to be so willing

to simply open,

to rise when called,

to believe, again and again,

that this

all of this

is worth waking for.