It is time e e

The transition begins.  To the naked eye, it started Friday.  Driving home through the park, I saw a glint of light green out of the corner of my eye.  Living in the northeast, we have four very distinct seasons.  We are just now moving from the monochromatic schemes of the last four to five months to our transition season of soft color, warmth, and light. Despite the pastels and the seemingly delicate buds of the trees and flowers poking through the ground, the passage to spring is not gentle.

For the trees and flowers to blossom, they must endure the fluctuations from 20 degrees to 70 degrees several times a week. Cloudy days still far outnumber the sunny days and the wind often gusts up to 40 mph.  The buds on the trees hang in there waiting for the warmth of sunny days we start to see.  The flowers push through the ground to strain for the next round of warmth and sun.  It's a struggle to reincarnate the trees and flowers each spring, but rebirth does happen each year. 

I love our transition seasons.  Spring and fall bring a sense that something good is coming.  For spring, the transition brings color and warmth, but also, hope.  It is an opportunity to feel the breeze on your face, smell a new freshness in the air, and lose the winter coat to move about freely in the sun.  See, in practice, not every Spring is perfect in every way.  The cold air may hold on for a bit and the spring showers often last well into May.  The struggle is very real. But Spring does come and with it, an appreciation for life, nature, and just being alive.

It is in this first sighting of spring that the words of e e Cummings are always conjured up.  And so on Friday, I drove through the park thanking god for all which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.  The time is now, ee, it is now.

i thank You God for most this amazingday:for the leaping greenly spirits of treesand a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
 
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

 e e Cummings