Walking at sunrise this morning with Zac the Dog, Richmond Pond blew open my heart yet again. Those layers of ice, that ice that seemed to never waiver, that ice that held cars and people and lots of them—was melting!
Ice to water!
Can you see it in this picture’s light of dawn?
It happens. It always happens, yet, in the happening, a renewal of the miraculous seems to unfold.
Ice will give up its hold and turn to water.
Rigid frozen earth does soften into slushy mud.
The cold light of winter does shift, oh, so subtly, into caressing, expansive light.
The hollow silence will give way to the fullness, to the richness of bird calls.
The earth awakens again. In spite of the intensity of this past winter, its frigidity and loss and endlessness, the birds returned. And with them come fullness, softness, aliveness, and renewal.
I sit on the porch beneath the blue sky. I am long-john free, only wearing two thin layers. Scanning my body, I am shocked–I might be warm!
Zac sits in the grass, in the shade, surveying, guarding, watching over his domain. I sit within mine—my home, my wife, my dog, my life—with a quietude of gratitude, with a gentle hope.
Spring may actually be here.
