Spring feels different this year. It is late. The nights are still cold and nature seems reluctant to wake from it’s winter slumber. It seems like a mirror to the ongoing restrictions on society. The sense of renewal that spring invokes feels deceptive this year. The death of my dog last month still puts a touch of sadness on everything. I wish I could travel, to see the mountains or the sea, to feel the full strength of the elements again. The time passes, but some things seem to be on hold.
The seasons of change are my favourite times of the year. In spring the days become warm enough to enjoy long walks in the sunlight, without the unbearable heat of the summer sun. It used to invigorate me after long grey days. And despite it all, spring is coming. I try to let the brighness and colours infect me.
The Trees
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
~ Philip Larkin ~
The Enkindled Spring
This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.
I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.
And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that’s gone astray, and is lost.
~ D. H. Lawrence ~
