Mid-January and still
the last amaryllis refuses.
Planted in October,
it just now raises
a green bud tip
to the bright window. 
Inside the plain package
waits a blaring red,
the flower furled,
held like breath
in the trumpeter’s body.
~Francesca Bell “Late Blooming” from What Small Sound

Sometimes when you’re in a dark place
you think you’ve been buried,
but actually you’ve been planted.
~Christine Caine

It came home with me over a month ago,
a non-descript bulb with a green sword-blade shoot
emerging shyly from the top.

Its care and feeding
was a lot of “watch and wait”
and just a little water.
It has been our winter morning entertainment
as we munched down cereal,
gauging how many centimeters
it rose over night.

It took over the kitchen table~
two tall stalks topped with tight-fisted buds
which opened oh-so-slowly over several days
like a drowsy student after Christmas break,
not yet ready to meet and greet the world
but once the commitment to wake is made,
there is no other blossoming quite like it anywhere.

How can we possibly understand,
while still buried in the dark,
that we too rest planted in holy ground,
waiting for the wakening
that calls us forth to bloom, and fruit, and amaze.