welcoming (imploring! beseeching!) spring

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring.
If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature,
if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep,
if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you,
know that the morning and spring of your life are past.
Thus may you feel your pulse.

—from the journal of Henry David Thoreau (1859)

Harsh words from Mr. Thoreau, but I will tell you this: I could not have more sympathy with morning and spring if I tried! But, my sympathy is cloaked with impatience—when will spring truly arrive? Even the plants are anxious, I can feel that. The iris and lily sprouts have popped their heads up out of the soil, but they’re unsure whether or not the time of growth has come. Most mornings they seem to huddle together in an attempt to keep warm. Even the chives are plodding.

I’ve been doing what I can during this protracted gloom, raking up the detritus of winter storms, pruning (hopefully correctly) our pear trees, checking on this, that, and the other thing in the yard. But, still, mother nature makes me wait. Perhaps the ‘early’ Easter is to blame for the dissonance I feel—the Resurrection has come but the world slumbers on, oblivious to the miracle that has transpired.