The Turning of the Spring

The season begins with a whisper of rain,

a quiet murmur under gathering light,

the thawing breath that wakes the sleeping buds,

shakes free the trees, and stirs the waiting wind.

It seeps into the skin of raw, cold earth,

coaxing it back to the business of green.

At first, the world shows only hints of green,

slick moss reborn beneath the weeping rain,

the scent of rot and root deep in the earth,

where worms rise up to seek a sliver of light.

The branches creak and argue with the wind,

but yield, in time, to the small work of buds.

In silence they swellthese fragile, stubborn buds

each one a sealed promise folded in green.

The forest listens to the shifting wind

and learns again the rhythm of the rain,

the weightless chant that pulses into light,

then disappears beneath the open earth.

And oh, the hunger in the waking earth

for everything: for roots, for growth, for buds,

for sunlight filtered through the newborn light,

for every fern and vine and blade of green

to rise again despite the hammering rain,

to hold their ground against the restless wind.

For even now, the ever-turning wind

unfolds a hundred voices from the earth

a robin’s trill, the drip of fresh spring rain,

the shiver in the petals of new buds,

the rustle of a thousand tones of green,

all gathered in the long spill of the light.

There is no better work than chasing light,

than bending with the trees into the wind,

than honoring the hush within the green

as roots entwine beneath the breathing earth,

as if each leaf were made of daring buds,

as if the world were written out in rain.

So let the rain keep time, and let the light

reveal the buds, the wind, the rising green

the dreaming earth is now fully wide awake.