No Matter How Bitter

It has begun. Again.
The first buds, the breaking of winter’s silence,
Tender, new, green promise,
hope you have nothing to do with,
hope built into life, cycles
never quite as simple or straight
as we would desire.

They are calling for snow tonight.
The buds will suffer. For a week, maybe two. But
there is no stopping the inevitable,
Bew life comes after old,
hope after despair, belief after surrender.
The snow will come. The snow will melt.
God and his love will not be denied.
And some time, date to be determined,
the lilacs will bloom.

It is your favorite week or two of the years,
the lilac bloom. You open your doors
and let the wind perfume your life.
It reminds you of your first week moving here
from a lifetime somewhere else,
somewhere darker, your new house,
the one you have now lived in nearly thirteen years,
a cacophony or unpacked boxes
and walls being knocked out, a debris of a life
being made anew, the fragrance of purple lilacs
filling your nostrils and filling your heart with hope.
You wait for them each year, and they come,
no matter how bitter the winter,
they come.

About this poem.

It has been a hard few years. But just now, life is precious, good, and ridiculously joy-filled,
not unlike when I first moved up here in early May nearly 13 years ago. God is good.

I really do have lilacs behind my house. Most years, I plant more. They bloom in mid/late May. The buds (Yes, that is them in the picture, from last year. This year’s are not that far quite yet.) are a constant reminder of the cycles I have survived, and the cycles I have rejoiced in; the eternal Mays in our life, no matter how old we become.

Or, about Spring.

Tom