Category: cold

The earth invalid, dropsied, bruised, wheeled
Out in the sun,
After frightful operation.
She lies back, wounds undressed to the sun,
To be healed,
Sheltered from the sneapy chill creeping North wind,
Leans back, eyes closed, exhausted, smiling
Into the sun. Perhaps dozing a little.
While we sit, and smile, and wait, and know
She is not going to die. 
~Ted Hughes from “ A March Morning Unlike Others” from Ted Hughes. Collected Poems

March. I am beginning
to anticipate a thaw. Early mornings
the earth, old unbeliever, is still crusted with frost
where the moles have nosed up their
cold castings, and the ground cover
in shadow under the cedars hasn’t softened
for months, fogs layering their slow, complicated ice
around foliage and stem
night by night,

but as the light lengthens, preacher
of good news, evangelizing leaves and branches,
his large gestures beckon green
out of gray. Pinpricks of coral bursting
from the cotoneasters. A single bee
finding the white heather. Eager lemon-yellow
aconites glowing, low to the ground like
little uplifted faces. A crocus shooting up
a purple hand here, there, as I stand
on my doorstep, my own face drinking in heat
and light like a bud welcoming resurrection,
and my hand up, too, ready to sign on
for conversion.
~Luci Shaw “Revival” from What the Light Was Like.

This year, spring has been emerging early from an exceptionally warm and un-snowy winter, yet blizzard conditions last night closed the Cascade mountain passes with high winds causing extensive power outages in the Puget Sound region.

Our hilltop farm was spared overnight – we are grateful for light and heat this morning.

Up until now, all growing things have been several weeks ahead of the usual budding/blooming schedule when, like the old “Wizard of Oz” movie, the landscape suddenly turns from monochrome to technicolor with a soundtrack going from forlorn to glorious.

Like most folks, I too yearn for spring to commence, tapping my foot impatiently as if I’m personally owed an extravagant seasonal transformation from dormant to verdant. 

We wait for the Great Physician’s announcement that His patient survived winter once again:
“I’m happy to say the Earth is alive and restored, wounded but healing, breathing on her own but too addled by last night’s windstorm for you to expect much from her just yet.”

As we celebrate her imminent healing, we are reassured His Creation is still very much alive- we rejoice in this temporary home of ours.
A promising prognosis for this patient coming out of the fog of winter:
she lives, she breathes, she thrives, to bloom and sing with everything she’s got.
So soon, so will I.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…