A Season Turning, Again

Tomorrow I go back to work, at the college.  It's been a while since I've read about Einstein's Theory of Relativity.  But I don't recall that it explained why time goes so quickly during holidays and vacations!


Yet it seems that so much time has passed.  In part, that's because the season almost literally changed from the time Spring Recess began until the time it ended.  The early part of the week was chilly and rainy; today was very much a spring day.  Actually, it would have seemed later in the spring had it not been for the trees that are just beginning to open buds.   It's as if they want and need to open themselves to the sunshine and the new warmth.  But it is difficult:  the dampness and cold and darkness have stiffened them--or, perhaps, made them simply reluctant and reticent, in the way of someone whose whose eyes are opening to the light they yearn for yet still feel the sting of the cold, like an old wound that's still fresh.


Trees like the ones I saw today inspired me--almost twenty years ago!--to write the following:


Magnolia

Buds throb red. Cold raindrops cling to bare branches after the first April storm. My fingertips swelling, my body pulses: the center of this old wound, still fresh. Still, I don’t pull off my gloves-- There are no leaves opening from this tree.

Each of the next couple of days will be progressively warmer, or so the forecasters say.  Then rain and chilly winds will return, and the weather will feel like early spring again by next weekend.  But, ironically, the leaves will be fuller, and there will be more of them.