Winter's Spring

Daffodils blooming, and in the most unexpected places. Not being indigenous to the coastal region I find anything that offers a glimpse of life before April, suspicious. I begin to look for the source of the deviance, usually a nuclear power facility that has gone awry, or a Cannabis sativa drying facility, that has gone up in smoke. But alas it is just the temperament of the rain forest that brings life to the innocuous observations of a winter now past.

I do find it contemplative, that Daffodils should find their way to the most unexpected of places. Interstate roadsides, the edges of fields miles from civilization. They appear to have the ability to multiply in the most formidable of places. I am not complaining. It is a wonderful surprise to find color, in the forethought of a new season. It provides a sense of hope, when that is all that is required from a hint of spring.

It is as if daffodils have been required by an evolutionary process to awaken other species to the prospect of a changing world. A world that seems to never tire searching for itself, until it is found. Light replacing darkness, hope eclipsing the daunting reality of cold.  Spring, a harbinger of an envisioned paradise. The metaphorical Pandora’s Box of mystical color, scent, texture, all brought from the recesses of ones dreams to the forefront of an imagination, and all by the simplicity and tenacity of a spirit rising from the dead.

The first flowers not only provide a sense of euphoria but allow the stars of the show, waiting in the wings, to emerge in all their glory.  Their paths having been enlightened by a lesser grace, allow the budding trees to rise from the bleakness, explode against the blue of the sky and the translucent tumbling marshmallow clouds, seeking absolution. The blushing pinks and yellows make me wish to take off my shoes and run barefoot across a field of emerging grasses, waking the earth worms, that have transformed death into a new beginning.

The metaphors entombed in natures palette of color, no matter how finely crafted, are incapable of explaining the promise they pull from our hearts and souls. They expose, the fragility of the ages that have gone, and of those yet to come, as they will adorn our valleys and mountains long after we have become assimilated into their makeup.

What is it about the bloom, regardless of species, genus, family, that incorporates the melancholia of a funeral ceremony with the jubilation inherent in a wedding, both soliciting emotions of a time, and place, with the same stimulus?

A dandelions yellow head emerging from the scalloped leaves of an unwanted intrusion, into a universe of preened and propagated relatives, of a different status, why? Is it because we attribute not only emotion but character, to a flower that represents us in all manner of life? The rose, supported by a thorny stem, its flower promoting Kings and Queens, while its stalk is left to defend the hierarchy with only the sword tips of a common soldier.

Lily’s that seek the moisture of the ravines leading to the sea, explode from their parched environment. Forces of the sea, endowing new power to the windswept hills, capable of supporting little more than grasses that are accepting of their mundane existence, until they disappear in the smoke of a wild fires rage. It races across their naked backs, exposing the earth to the rains that now long for the protection they had taken for granted.  It is then too late to ask, for forgiveness. Perhaps their bland existence, a life without the arrogance of a blossom has been overlooked by the Gods, until it is time once again to nourish the fauna that stand at the woods beginning, waiting for a donation.

The white acned petals of the berry bush, fraught with an embarrassed hue that promises a flamboyant fruit of a vine that seeks its own pleasure, comes for us. It is called invasive, as it fails to understand the word, stop. It has the ability to intrude wherever the sun will allow its migration, regardless of its intent. Its black berries swelling in anticipation, of the bird making its way towards a disappearing sun. A journey it knows will be reassigned yearly, if not to its self, to a future migrant, providing an identical shadow to the land it traverses.  A dangerous and strenuous trip will be endured, because it must, it has been prophesized.

The sunflower, its golden petals circumventing a future of striped prodigies, that chase the sun in its game of tag. I watch the clouds interfere with an urgency, required to survive.  The daunting height it seeks to attain, while wary of the valley breeze that is capable of toppling the most obstinate of overseers. 

Seeds, the future of all life, recognizing the need to die so that others may live, but doing so with a sense of acceptance that comes from a million seasons of apathy, when all that is expected, is a measure of gratitude. The squash, pumpkin, gourd blossoms on an escaping vine seek, no matter the environment, to accomplish what it has been pledged to do. Rummaging in the soil, spreading its spoils in hopes of introducing the newly evicted to a time content to wait for permission, to begin anew.

As the mountains offer their blanket of snow to the sun, its tears creating veins, arteries, that exchange a chance of life, for life itself. The pock marked vestiges of a million years, fill with the teaming remnants of a yesterday, its clear blood a sacrifice in honor of those that glide through its slippery medium, or awaken the air above with arrogant wings, and forgiving hearts. Vibrantly dimpled spheres emerge from the mud, providing landing sites for the dragons that roam the skies, in search of someone to share their story.

Floating islands find themselves the hiding place for the forms that slip beneath their mirrored surface, as the equinox tires of its slow march from a past towards a future, the Solstice looms brighter with each passing day, until it meets itself, half way. The mimicked yellow lotus flowers burst from their terminals, frogs chorus a greeting as the spirit of summer, walks on the emerald surface as assuredly as the God of old, floats above the ephemeral plain pretending to be lost, in the reverie of a last summer’s day.

The rains that called life from its sleep have disappeared behind the horizon and allow the sun to reclaim what it has made possible. When the warmth spreads across the land, and shadows hide or are dissolved, like the fog that settles like a gift remembered, following the rivers path until it leads to the origins of itself. 

I can only recall, that flowers once glowed against their backdrop of blue sky, as memories of past lives are tinted by the changing light and resemble the water color portraits of themselves, that had been left to the rain. The color too will fade into darkness as the cold emerges, and steals relief from hearths and hearts.  Holly from the woods adorn the mantel of another season as a wedge forms in the gray sky signaling another time, anointing the silence with the call of gratitude that ebbs and flows, in its honor.

I sit remembering what is to come, what has floated by un-noticed and am grateful for the chance to have watched, as the visions of Spring escape into a universe of doubt and apprehension, and only life being ignored, by those who will not see.