Remember the rhyme about April showers and May flowers?
Well, it hardly does justice to the moisture
that has fallen from the sky these past days.
It’s as if it rained green
and the land responded with an eruption of lime and emerald hues.
Hay-colored grass, dried leaves, and empty branches
have given way to the distinctive shades of early spring.
Fruit trees and ephemeral early risers
join tulips, daffodils, and the like
coloring the landscape as if a painter
just said ‘the heck with it’
and flung her palette of paints into the wind.
And the weeds, oh the weeds, join in with great tenacity.
Already shoving out the things we wish would grow there.
And if you have the incredible good fortune
of getting to tend a small piece of earth,
then no doubt you have been witness
to what lies beneath the surface:
the web of roots and rhizomes
that twist and tangle and hold on tight.
Need we look any further to appreciate how intimately we are all connected?
How no one can walk out their door without feeling washed in green right now?
Or how the roots of connection tie us to one another—subtly and inexorably–
no matter our differences
no matter how irreparable they seem…
we are together on this beautiful and complicated world
tasked with breathing the same air
and compelled toward growth, just like all other living things.
With a deep breath of green-moist air,
serenaded by birds whose songs we’ve not heard for many months,
may we turn to one another
with curiosity, tender care, and shared delight
and marvel at this planet we get to call home.
