1 Shot Wednesday: Backyard

Spring has exploded. The skeletal trees are filling up fast. Yesterday what was blossoming is now leafing. This is my first spring in Virginia. I am loving the grass and our backyard cows as they meander back and forth in the field behind us.

Since you enjoyed last week’s poem, here’s another. This time by Emily Dickinson.

“A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period –
When March is scarcely here

A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.

It waits upon the Lawn,
It shows the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope you know
It almost speaks to you.

Then as Horizons step
Or Noons report away
Without the Formula of sound
It passes and we stay –

A quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.”

The urgency. Hurry up and get an eyeful–no sooner does Spring arrive than it’s gone. I find myself staring hard at each daffodil, each dogwood. I take deep breaths of the hyacinth and the dirt and listen to the conversations of the Cardinal and Robin.

Welcome back, the color green!

1 Shot Wednesday: Early Spring

Winter? Where? Not here in south central Virginia. On a recent hike, our granddaughter Milly presented me a surprise bouquet.

It was a breezy, sunny day. Thousands of them along a hill by a pond. Well, it got me to thinking of William Wordsworth’s classic:

I wandered lonely as a Cloud
   That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
   A host of golden Daffodils;
Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
   And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
   Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
   Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:—
A Poet could not but be gay
   In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the shew to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie
   In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
   Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.

I hope your day is sunny, breezy and filled with dancing daffodils.

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