Poetry

The Nascent Buds of Spring

The flourishing of beauty after grief

I’ve laid down into the earth the dark nubs of despair and watered them with tears,

and now the tiny buds born of grief and shattered dreams have poked their nibs into the first breath of spring.

The turning of a season, the third now since you’ve been gone, hums along, nature not perceptibly altered by your absence.

Heavy veins of chartreuse light pump and sputter life through hairy fronds, unfurling now into the higher slant of sun.

Nascent blooms waft sultry sweetness into day-warmed air, but still close against the night.

The yellow-skirted ladies dance within my garden walls. Soon the hyacinth will bloom.

The robins and the finches have begun to twitterpate. Hummers screech. Monarchs float on rising breezes.

And still, you are gone.

But there is such beauty, such insolent, blinding beauty, beauty which rends my heart open.

I turn my face to the sun.

And I welcome spring.

In memory of Emerson, who loved spring, and who will be in my heart forever.

Erika Burkhalter is a yogi, neurophilosopher, cat-mom, photographer, and lover of travel and nature, spreading her love and amazement for Mother Earth’s glories, one photo, poem or story at a time. (MS Neuropsychology, MA Yoga Studies).

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Photos and story ©Erika Burkhalter. All rights reserved.