Hopeful Daffodils

March in the South heralds the ancient shifting of the seasons. After a long and particularly cold winter here, the days are beginning to warm up. The swollen tips of trees and bushes have turned deep purple and rose and a few early starters have pale leaf tips unfurling. White service berry and redbud dot the woods and roadsides. The daffodils are in full bloom, their bright yellow faces soaking up the sun and reminding us of where now long forgotten gardens used to be. It is a lovely gift to see drifts of them along the country roads where they have spilled out of long ago borders and are all that remain of old homesteads. When I have stopped to gather some I've found they are not tall and lanky like their sophisticated city cousins, who sport large petal faces with long trumpets. No, these are small, with sturdy little stems and modest countenances. Seeing a rush of them when everything else is rainy and cold is nothing short of uplifting.

Yes, Spring is all about rebirth and fresh starts. Unlike the turn of the New Year which is about planning, Spring is all about doing. As the world turns green around us, we find our own sap rising and with it, new energy to channel into our lives. After all the brooding and introspection of the winter, Spring brings an energetic release that moves us out of our interior spiritual and physical world and back into the stream of living. We get restless. We buy seeds, get new haircuts, take off our heavy jackets. Just like the returning birds and mating animals, we too can feel the deep creative urge to build a life. Spring is nature's expression of hopefulness and as it determinedly pushes up all around us, it strikes that same chord in us. It is a powerful demonstration that even when we feel there are no more opportunities, no possibility for change, no solution to our problems, we are still part of something larger than ourselves where there is still an unquenchable impulse for life instead of against it.

"For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills

And dances with the daffodils."

William Wordsworth