There’s a dripping at my windowpane, steady.

and the March wind fill- billows the flag and follows the barest branches

blowing across the bluest sky.

I heard the woodpecker pecking just yesterday in the still morning of the first Spring day

and I hadn’t heard his echo in a while.

The sun-

I told my little ones-

it’s closer now

warmer

they look upward

squinted and thinking

the place near the stones where my first crocus always lies

waiting

– the ground

expectant -like us-

And the white earth is giving way to the dirt tracked in through the backdoor.

Gritty and muddy and messy.

:::: and I think about Spring like this.

It was my birthday when the biggest snow cloaked

and I marveled at the power

immense and all-covering

deep

alabaster

— immaculate

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.   +Isaiah 1:18

but now my boot

finds muck

again

bog-sticking

-begrimed

and I just–

-want to shake it off.

and Spring is like that.

It always is.

The way it wakens the dormant

The way it fractures silence

The way it revels in beginning

again

The way it needs the dirt

-to grow.

Ask the Lord for rain in the springtime;
    it is the Lord who sends the thunderstorms.
He gives showers of rain to all people,
    and plants of the field to everyone. +Zechariah 10

and sometimes how this life

-breaks ground again

how the dew rain falls after the Winter’s gone

deep soaking in the soil

and something organic rises

fresh and bold

earthen

and Springtime-

how it compels a looking up and a stretching forth

reaching

and

Today the first robins bounded into the one brown patch

The scarlet::::

stark against snow- wet gray- barked birches

reminding

me quietly

of this Hope I have

the Spring sure of arriving

the way He makes

all :

things :

new :

The time of singing^[j] has come…
Arise, my darling.
Come away,

my beautiful one.

+Song of Solomon 2