Author: Susan Minarik

I’m still a quarter mile from the marsh when I hear them, the red-winged blackbirds. The males sing conk-la-ree, the last note sharp and rising, the females answering with chack-chack-chack in applause.

My approach alarms them. A male darts from the reeds to the top of a young, budding maple and continues its interrupted serenade.

 The sun glints off the pond’s waters. The winter-bleached cattails glow golden in its late afternoon light.

A pair of mallards, fresh from my dreams, floats in slow circles near the far shore.

I stand on the hilltop, glad as day to be here, drinking in the sights and the oh-so-welcome song.

A friend tells me that her daffodils are several inches above ground now. Of course she lives a few hundred miles south of me. But still, it’s possible that mine might be sprouting, too.

I walk to the back corner where a patch of them grows wild every year. All I find is matted leaves, wall to wall. I’ll keep watch.

On my way back to the house I stop to say hello to the sentinel I call the Eldest Daughter, a spruce I count among my close and dearly loved companions. Wordlessly, I ask if spring is coming.

Wordlessly, she answers, showing me how her arms are open in welcome, how an overflow of fresh sap is oozing onto her bark. I pat her in thanks.

Always she bestows her gentle lessons in patience.

But I think that, secretly, she likes my anticipation, too.

Snow melts on the mossy log
telling the tale:

The dance of winter’s yin and yang
is at its balance point.
Neither holds sway.
Things can tip either way
and will, for days.
Spring’s advance
makes fools of us all.

If I could dance my way
to the heart of sun,
or step through a portal
that led to any star,
I imagine the light that I’d see
would be a play of hues like these
that color the sky tonight.

I imagine I would travel
on music played by artisans
who drew their sounds
from the soul songs of angels.

Glistening crystals
that look like the year’s first snow
would shimmer all around me
sounding their silvery chimes.

I would find myself enveloped
in tenderness unlike any
that I had ever dreamed or known.

And I would finally understand
what my innermost heart
had always known to be true:
Each of us is real, and known,
and dearly, deeply loved.

Even me.
Even me.

What lured me up the hillside was the splash of green I spotted from my kitchen window. It was right at the base of the maple where I remembered seeing tall spikes of green first thing last spring. Wiggling with happy anticipation, I pulled on my boots, zipped up my jacket and headed out.

“March Fool!” a knot of little kids laughed from a corner of my mind as I saw that the green I had spotted wasn’t fresh sprouts at all, just ferns left over from last year.

“No!” I shout at the taunting voices. “It’s April Fool, not March. Go home.” They turned and faded into the mental mist, still giggling that I was fooled.

“Even so,” I said, turning to the fern. “You’re quite lovely.” It agreed that I could take its photo in honor of its grace. I thanked it and bid it fare well.

I looked up the hill to choose a path for my climb. A cat seemed to be trapped in the bark of the maple’s trunk there before me. Or was it an owl? You decide.

The stump to the east looked like a horse’s head with its deep brown eye and the green foam around its mouth, proof that it breathed deeply before it finally fell.

And right here at my feet, the roots of a towering giant are decorated with bouquets of seeds and twigs, fallen leaves and lingering ferns, as if others had come before me, leaving gifts on its moss-painted toes.

Then, high above me, a crow’s call cut the air. Looking up, I saw the silhouette of the trees waltzing in the breeze. For a minute or two, I stood at their feet waltzing with them. Then I climbed back down, heading home, glad to have been a March fool.

Oh, sky, who drenched us in sunlight
for nearly a week of days, whose stars
glittered at night in your velvet deep,
we thank you. And we watch in thanks
as you pull in your soft clouds now
to let your nectar fall on all the hidden flowers
who grow beneath Earth’s soil, dreaming,
as do we, of the coming spring.

If you know how to listen to trees, you can tell. They might look as if they’re just standing there, not a thought passing between them. But that’s not true.

They’re thinking all right. One thought. Every one of them: “Are they here yet? Have you seen one? Have you heard one sing?”

The tension of their anticipation fills the air. Any day now, any moment, it will happen. Suddenly they will telegraph to each other, “Yes! They’re here! They’re here!”

And even if it snows again, no one will care. When the robins come, spring can’t be far behind.

The woods atop the south hill look bleached in the early morning light. The ground, powdered with snow, is littered with fallen trunks and limbs. Some seasons are hard.

Nevertheless, the atmosphere shimmers with the freshness of a new day, just emerging from the night and brimming with countless possibilities. Beneath the snow, the earth hides quickening seeds.

I slowly work my way to the hill’s crest, pausing to listen to the silence, to watch a small bird flutter among the trees’ subtly budding twigs. Beneath my boots damp leaves press into the earth.

The snow sparkles on the logs and branches like a blessing as I step so carefully between them. I count it a privilege to be here. This, this is sacred ground.

I remember it well. It was a cold and dreary day, much like today, one of those late February days when you think winter is going to go on forever. I was driving down country roads returning home from a friend’s house when I saw them, stoically braving the snow as they pushed their square faces through its powder in search of a mouthful of grass.

I stopped beside them and rolled down my window. “Only a few more weeks,” i shouted to them through the frosty air. “The groundhog said so.”

That’s when the one nearest me turned and looked me right in the eyes. From somewhere deep inside her she summoned a deep breath and with great clouds of steam pouring from her nostrils she bellowed, clear as day, “Boooooooo!”

“My sentiments exactly,” I told her. And I rolled up my window and drove on.