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First hepatica at the Cobble - like little
ragamuffin children bursting out of their dark, winter-weary houses into the
sunlight, clad only in raggedy leaf dresses with flowers in their hair.
There's an open space preserve nearby named Bartholomew's Cobble where I often go to hike, especially now when warmer weather brings snow melt and the forest floor wakes up. Spring is the season of
littles - all those baby plants! One of my favorite first flowers is the blunt lobed hepatica (see above).
Hepatica at the Cobble
The
merest hint
of spring
brings them out
like
small children bursting
from a
winter-weary house.
Out of
the dark into the light
wearing
only leaf scraps
for
clothing and flower petals
round
their heads,
they
clamber over rocks
and peer
down the wooded hillsides
to the
wandering river—
or lean
back to stare, yellow-eyed
at the
blue bowl of sky.
How such
a small, green, growing thing
can move
the weighted earth,
how
blooms so delicate, so barely visible,
can reach
and swell the human heart,
is one of
the world's
happiest miracles.
happiest miracles.
If I stand still on the Cobble path and close my eyes, what comes first are not images, but sounds - the plaintive two note song of the
chickadee and the harsher call of the phoebe, the whisper of disturbed leaves,
the crackle of twigs underfoot, the sigh of the wind through the hemlock and
cedars, the scritching of windblown oak leaves, the startled honk of a goose and a great flapping of feathers.
The sun hugs my shoulders, the breeze pats my cheek. Eyes open now, I see a splash of brilliant green moss, the small spirals and whorls of fuzzy stems, leaves lifting to the sun. Such small things growing under the giant trees. The wind whirls like a child at play, then hunkers down to blow at a leaf.
I stop to break the fragile ice that has shrunk to the size of a dinner plate in the middle of a puddle. The sweet, fertile scent of mud, of the earth waked from its winter sleep, fills me with elation.
The sun hugs my shoulders, the breeze pats my cheek. Eyes open now, I see a splash of brilliant green moss, the small spirals and whorls of fuzzy stems, leaves lifting to the sun. Such small things growing under the giant trees. The wind whirls like a child at play, then hunkers down to blow at a leaf.
I stop to break the fragile ice that has shrunk to the size of a dinner plate in the middle of a puddle. The sweet, fertile scent of mud, of the earth waked from its winter sleep, fills me with elation.
I could look for spring
in the curled
leaf bud of the lilac bush
in the happy morning
sunlight or
the kissing warmth of the
southern wind
Maybe it's in the
cardinal's love song'
or in the mad swirl of
starlings
streaming from the
treetops
or even the delighted
burble of
a road side stream
I could poke under last
year's leaf mulch
for this year's bloodroot
or kick the gritty
snowbank into
a thousand glistening
fragments
but I think I will simply
go to the edge of
the road where the mud
lives and
breathe deep