Each Year You Take the Same Picture

Each year you take the same picture
at the same time of year, almost May.

The lilacs budding. A week or few
away from full flower, a teaser of spring.

Each year you take the same picture,
drawn to the hope after the long Vermont winters, happy

there is something you can count on
when so little else is clear.

About this poem

I was going through old pictures this morning. And I noticed that every year since I moved up here to Vermont, I took shots of the lilacs behind my house in mid-April. Some years they are pretty far along. Some years they are encased in ice. But every year I take the picture. The one in today’s post was taken last week.

It’s been a long year, huh? Me too. And a year ago none of it would have been predictable. And what’s ahead is not really predictable. And so it is that small things, like the slow unveiling of spring, my love’s hand in my own, the sun’s afternoon rays, have power. They remind me that things really are predictable.

Just not the timing.

Be well.

Tom