Much-Needed Whispers of Spring
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Recently, I took a little walk out in the fresh air, dodging sprinkles. I have been inactive (not really by choice) for far too long, and waiting for a day of early spring sun has proved futile here in Vermont. The temperature wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t cold either. I wore a light jacket and made my way around the block, glancing at piles of leaves raked from flower beds, looking across lawns for evidence of greening, and scouring yards for snowdrops and wild violets. I turned my gaze upward to examine the tree branches for any signs of buds. After a too-long winter and over a month of a nagging health issue, I was ready to welcome any glimpses of spring, soft as a whisper though they are.
Here’s a list I have started to keep me from giving up on April:
Ten Whispers of Spring:
A sixty degree day, afternoon sun pouring through the south windows (I think this happened once, and now it just feels like wishful thinking)
Sitting on the deck at sunrise, jacket on, hood up, hands wrapped around a warm mug of coffee
The slow, but sure return of the dawn chorus (I’ve been leaving the bedroom window open at night to catch the morning song)
Pops of greenish-brown buds waiting to swell on trees and bushes (thinking about forcing a few forsythia branches inside in a tall vase)
A lone yellow pansy trying to push its way into existence in Lakshmika’s Garden
Rhododendron bushes taking on the shape of blooming readiness
The first prediction of a thunderstorm for the spring season on the local weather channel
Dressing in layers since the morning can be an entirely different season than the afternoon
Replacing my winter bayberry-scented writing candle with a fresh rain, ginger, and lavender-scented Rainy Day Reads candle in honor of the daily “April Showers”
Understanding that spring might be the reason we need April to be Poetry Month….
The reality has set in that we are looking at a very late spring this year, and I’ve already set my sights on May. By May, spring usually shouts its presence everywhere. Just blink an eye and there it is: in the grass, in the trees, in the gardens, and in the warm, sunny air. Even the odd, cold and rainy Mother’s Day will give way to the apple blossoms. As full-on, leafed-out trees are suddenly just there for the looking, you’ll wonder, “When did that happen?” By mid May, I’ll be choosing my annuals to pepper the property with color, accenting the perennial beds my husband has lovingly cared for since early April, cutting back, weeding, edging, patiently cultivating.
I’m not giving up on April. But if May wants to be a spring month that shouts its arrival by jumping enthusiastically right into summer, so be it! I’m here to cheer it on.
Instructions on Not Giving Up
Ada Limón (1976 –)
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
Copyright © 2017 by Ada Limón. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 15, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
I really love the description of spring in the poem as “a return to the strange idea of continuous living (oh,The Precious Days) despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty;” it feels particularly poignant. How is spring making its way into your life this year? Let me know in the Comments.
