Every season brings its upheaval, but the end of winter has certainly been no light affair while war and pandemic rage at once. With all the unpredictability in our world, the coming of each season—the familiarity, the reliability—brings a balm. With climate change, we risk losing some of the comfort of seasonal predictability, but there are signifiers that never change and that can motivate us to save them, with their healing and beauty. Tomorrow is the vernal equinox, with an official spring arrival time of 11:33 am. We may not see change on the dot, but already and coming soon... we see our crocuses that bring us first hopes, the other bulbs will start blooming, the lilacs will eventually burst into their sweetly scented offering of abundance. For me, I know there will be that moment when I step out my front door and my crabapple shows the tiniest bit of green on the tips of its branches. I will remember as if coming out of a fog that I will get to watch each slow moment of its unfurling into leaf and then bloom. It will be the closest moment to true joy I will feel all year.
But if anything comes close to such a moment, it's the discovery of a nourishing and delightful poem! Zaro Weil writes poetry for children that brims with wonder at nature. In the following poem, she slowly yet joyfully ushers in spring, with a final line that reminds us of just why the earth's rituals are so important to our land and to our inner peace.
Think of It
Think of it
The first shudder of damp
That somehow signaled
All was ready
Then
In the deep inside of earth
In the muted underneath of winter
Spring began
Not with a sudden trumpet of green
Or a sky of confetti blossoms
But with a seed
Small, pale and barely breathing
It lay quietly
Waiting for the lavender clouds
That carry the first warm rains
Then
For some reason as ancient and
Everyday as the sun itself
The seed cracked
Split and softly burst into
A faint tendril
A root a sprout
A thin wisp of a growing thing
And
With no thought of stopping
It pushed through the
Dark soil with the force of
A billion winter winds
Until it
Pierced the crust of the outside and
Split the frozen armor of earth
Which has held spring safe
Since time began
- Zaro Weil
Found in I Am the Seed That Grew the Tree, selected by Fiona Waters & illustrated by Frann Preston-Gannon