All About Spring

Entry 1– 

Spring reminds me of a spiritual rebirth; sunshine with a winter chill in the breeze that shifts the grass to hit my exposed legs. The sun is still high above. I check my phone and it’s one o'clock in the afternoon, and my weather app says it's 62 degrees. I adjust my legs and the part of the ground my leg touches is warmer than before. The sun is thawing out the cold, my heart, and laughter. I hear the laughter of the birds as they fly lazily in and out of the trees nearby. 

Spring is here and the grass lays beneath me. As I sit up, I allow my bare feet to dig into the dirt and grass. The earth is still cold even though the sun shines above. Winter is passing, but not without a final laugh. I remove my feet from below the earth, and I rest them in the sun. The trees still have bare branches, but there is the smallest hint of growth. On the branches small quantities of blossoms are beginning to take shape. In a month of constant sunshine, the greenery will return to Tennessee. In a month my heart will be thawed fully, the birds will be laughing in their homes, and the winter will be no more.

Entry 2– 

I just finished reading outside. My book of choice was Mary Oliver’s Blue Horses, which is a collection of her poems. This collection could only be read outside, which I believe is what should be done for any Oliver collection. Oliver has a gift for writing that lures you to the grass under a tree with the sun peeking through the leaves. Her poems transform me into a childlike state of mind where it feels I am experiencing poetry for the first time. I find I have to read her works strictly outside. 

She is a prolific writer. Every poem crafted to perfection. Some I devour immediately, while others I let soak into myself like the sun above. Specifically with Blue Horses, Oliver writes an exceeding amount of poems that I instantly fell in love with, but one in particular made me stop in my tracks. The poem made me reread it over and over again just to feel its life pulsing off the page. I thought I would share an excerpt from that poem, which Oliver titled THE FOURTH SIGN OF THE ZODIAC. She writes: 

I know, you never intended to be in this world. 

But you’re in it all the same. 

So why not get started immediately. 

I mean, belonging to it. 

There is so much to admire, to weep over. 

And to write music or poems about. 

In these few lines, she reaches into my mind and reminds me to live. Live. Live in this moment and all the rest to come. It’s easy in spring to feel like you can reinvent yourself completely. That you can start over because summer is near, but why do you need to change? You already belong. Reinvent yourself if you are not you but remember you and your true form belong on this earth and at this time, and Oliver reminded me of that.

Entry 3– 

Fresh air, first sunburn, washed strawberries. Fruit tastes sweeter in the spring. I sit outside again and indulge myself in the sweetest strawberries I have ever tasted. I suck the juices out and discard the leaves back into my container. My hands have their liquid on my fingertips. I wipe them on my pants and pick up my book. 

I am reading Albert Camus. Specifically, his nonfiction piece Committed Writings. I just finished his fourth and final letter to his German friend in the height of WWII. Each letter revealed to me the nature of Camus. He was not afraid to speak his mind when it came to what he viewed as human. I think it was a noble cause to send letters five years after someone has offended you. It is silly if it weren’t for the subject of the letters and the state of the world at the time. I can’t imagine being friends with someone and then seeing them fall into corrupted hands. The Great Wars make me so sad, but Camus showed me how hopeful people were that things were coming to an end, and that the bad wasn’t forever. 

This gives me hope. Hope and spring. Spring is the season of promises. Promises of a better place. Sun and flowers blooming in an array of colors of patterns. The four letters from Camus make me think of spring– the rebirth of an entire world after the war. Only spring can replicate that feeling of everything changing and shifting for the better. Spring is finally here and maybe things will get better.