Believe It When
Afternoon
You can’t always believe, even if you see it with your
own eyes. That’s what I was thinking
last week as I stopped along my walk to look out over the ponds and fields. The sun that was shining in my face was bright
and warm. The wind was steady out of the
west; it wasn’t necessarily warm, but it wasn’t cold either. The landscape said springtime. The snow that covered everything with about a
foot of white, was, for the most part, melted off from yesterday’s big rains;
there was only a ragged layer that allowed much of the tawny stiff grasses to
show through. The ponds were the most
deceptive of them all. With all of snow
melted off of them the ice mirrored the blue cloudless sky and looked from a
distance like open water.
The truth of the situation was most evident in two
ways. Those bright blue ponds should
have been rippled with a little chop of wavelets as the wind was certainly strong
enough. Instead, the surface was as
glassy as the mirror it appeared to be.
The second sign was that, although I watched out across the entire landscape
for a full ten minutes, I heard nothing, and I saw nothing moving.
Had this really been spring, with the world as it
appeared to be this January afternoon, no doubt there would already be sandhill
cranes standing ankle-deep in the snow.
They would be hopping with excitement as another small flight of cranes
descended, the greeters and the newly arriving would be blasting away the long winter
silence with their throaty trumpeting.
Even though it would be just a small preliminary group, their calls
would roll and echo across the entire marsh.
But, as it was, the songs of the marsh were still silent, as if frozen
in the pond ice.
There certainly was some benefit to the weather. This stretch of road I was walking was much
too icy to safely walk just a few days earlier.
This day of false spring still revealed the beauty of Spring’s face. You just have to guard against your emotions
getting the best of you. Safeguard your
heart, because this one’s love is fickle.
Indeed, the weather forecast is for snow again tonight.
The Next Morning
The snow fell wet and heavy just as predicted. This kind of snow frosts everything as it
clings to branches, revealing the lacy patterns of the interwoven branches that
aren’t so evident when everything is gray.
The entire landscape is white once again. Truth is that I wish it would stay white
until true spring is ready to settle in and stay. The world, my world, is supposed to be white
in the winter. Sleds should not be stacked
leaning against the garage wall. They
should be speeding laughing children down the big hill. And when the marsh is white the silence doesn’t
seem sad; it is peaceful, as if the world pulled up this white quilt to its
chin and is snuggled in and resting.
Spring will have her day, but not just yet. I know her face, and I’ll believe it when I really
see it.
His Peace <><
Deacon Dan
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