Recovering Greenness

          
           How Fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! ev’n as the flowers in spring;
             To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
                                      Grief melts away
                                      Like snow in May,
             As if there were no such cold thing.

             Who would have thought my shrivel’d heart
Could have recover’d greennesse? It was gone
             Quite under ground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown;
                                      Where they together
                                      All the hard weather,
             Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

(from "The Flower," George Herbert, 1633)

**
Walking outside just a minute ago, I felt the quality of the air change. The sun felt actually warm. Every year right around this time it seems that the film is stripped from my eyes, the chambers of my heart and mind opened up and swept out.

The crocuses are coming out, too. Under the ginkgo in the front yard and the red oak in the back, little yellow and white flower-cups are peeking at the sun. The daffodils are starting to open up too.

Driving to Union City and back yesterday, it was most pleasurable to look at some of the fields with their carpet of lush, fresh green.

These are all small things, I know; but especially this year, I'm determined to enjoy every bud, every shoot, every petal--to live in that green thought in a green shade.