The Softening of Spring

The Softening of Spring a meditation poem:

The Softening

There will be cold nights still,

and frosty mornings, a few at least.

For another few weeks I 

will still need to put the lamp on 

to read in the early morning 

after meditation,

but now when I open the window, 

though it is still dark 

the birds are singing 

in that quiet reassuring relearning 

the words once again kind of way.

The evenings too are taking a little longer before shuffling off stage out of winter night’s sparkle starry way. 

But, I felt the softening some weeks ago now, that deep moment of knowing, 

just knowing in the blood, in the bones 

that Spring has come. 

It is not marked on any calendar, 

receives no celebration, no parade, 

and yet it always arrives.

Arrives in its own way, at its own speed, regardless of the weather 

or the arguments over whether Spring begins on this date or that date. 

It knows no dates, owns only divine call.

It is a breath of life, a subtle change upon the breeze exhaled by the earth as she wakes, stirs, stretches.

It comes perfumed in subtle notes of fox musk and the honeyed tones of hyacinths and daffodils.

It is the colour of new green tips reflected in the golden lights of sharp sun, the deep wisdom of the old frog’s eye squat settled in love’s spawning in the weedy ditches.

It sets the world to loving, to nesting, to feeding, to flying home.

But for me, for me it is a softening of the heart, 

a dropping of the shoulders, 

a breath exhaled, a promise fulfilled, 

a remembrance of sacred resurrection trust, an ancient oath remade that tells

no dark, no night, no winter cold lasts forever and Spring comes always,

and when it will, 

So, yes;

I shall wear my scarf a while more, 

and smile now at the touch of frost 

and pray my heart, old and wintered though at times it may be shall ever soften too 

and breathe the grace of Spring.