Spring Is Everywhere - To The Trees Edition #61

All of a sudden, Spring is everywhere. And I have not the eyes and ears sufficient to take it all in; nor the wit or words to record and share it, despite my longing wish to do so.

As much of Spring as possible will be absorbed, but volumes far greater will be missed; a thought which simultaneously uplifts and saddens. The urge to consume every peep and squawk, every curl and flicker, is matched only by the want for it, in return, to consume me.

It’s unclear where Spring’s body ends and mine begins; it is equally unclear if Spring appears of its own accord or if it is drawn into being by our own yearning; maybe Spring is manifest through our incessant watching, the buds pop under the pressure of our focused eye and birdsong arrives only to satisfy our waiting ear. Perhaps Spring’s appearance is not inevitable, but provoked by the spark of observation, maybe it knows that it is being watched and, in full choir, it is fulfilling the observer’s desire to be seen. Spring is both the act and the audience; the flower and the eye that watches the flower become.

< Female ash Flowers and moon

One might wish it never to recede, this tide is released with such power and speed that it immerses me. And I could spend forever under its surface, sealed in its songs, spun under its current, thrown from warble to flute, from rattle to ring.

But, if one were forever immersed, one would not have the joy of its striking reappearance – it is only the absence of Spring’s song that makes its return such a joy.

…

The raucous party ensues and every corner of every crack and crevice sings with Spring’s brimming. Every cell of every creature is stretching towards the light, yawning into life, clawing at the thawing earth, and calling Beltane forth.

My focus tumbles upon Spring’s repeated phrases, bouncing like a bearing in a pinball machine, I reach up to the lofty announcements of mistle thrush, bounce off the ranting robins, ping back and forth between the great tits, fall into the fluted chute of blackbird before being slowly guided back down to earth by the pigeons’ gentle coo. All the while the wrens rattle their song from bills gaped as wide as heaven’s gate and as they do so, they release a certain light that lifts the birds’ song even higher, coating feather, leaf and land in a visible as well as an audible gold.

Oak Flowers

All the while, the trees sing a song in a language that touches the depths of the human soul. They are all that is gathered from above and all that is collected from below; where they meet is a tangle that makes an artwork of time, holding it still for a moment to be touched by our senses.

It is in this space, created between the marriage of heaven and earth, where Spring’s song erupts, held in the high and the low and compressed into expression, like clay.

I lay beneath a golden shawl, upon a bed of birdcall as the day proceeds unbothered by my tangle. It is not troubled. It places a pillow of the freshest bud burst beneath my weary head and rocks me gently awake, whispering a spell of relief, of successive rest, of renewal, and of rebirth.

MW – 14/3/25