The Heralds of Spring (in their own Voices...)

Chapter One:  Snowdrop

It is so cold, and the kind of wet that goes right through you.   There had been many nights under the stars in company of earth's other wilder things and the strangely lacking blanket of snow that had brought protection more than once to the family.    Not yet, the ice was unyielding.

  But when the rain had done its gentle work a few passings later, the softening, with its loosening work filling empty reservoirs with life-giving trickles of water  had begun in earnest. 

 Old winter had broken down for us the gathered refuse blankets and now the nutrients flowed with the showers.

As heralds, we took heart from the milky sunlight, such as it was;  it was enough for our kind  to begin with, though not only we felt the lengthening of passing.   In the new softness there was room to grow.   Grow we did.   Once broken free, the race began.   The tournament was relentless but position was vital.   Those fortunate few who caught more of the life-giver's attention were always first.    Day by day, leaf by stem and depth of root gave strength.   More showers, more breeze to rock the clods away.    Our little family were in a goodly corner of place, where no traffic or heavy leafage could spoil our upward pursuit.   The little legged ones and crawlies began their work, the sun, wind and rain theirs, and finally revelation.   Now to see and be seen.  Green.   Greener.   The white glory of our being not long afterward opened to the sun. 

 It was a good time, we were many.    It was a blessed time,  many of the housed ones rejoiced in our coming.    The competitors had not yet stolen eyes.   The rejoicing of visitation, the knowing ones seeing and hoping.

Many passings of sun we would know this year.   Strength passed to weakness, the shifting way of things where our glory moved on to others in turn.   Now  white turned green and others  ruled the garden.

Chapter two:  Crocus

The softening had come!   The life-bearing bulbs of life, so carefully placed throughout the park lawn,  had felt the lengthening and tried to jump to life, but timing was all important. 

 Once the softening had prepared our ground and the trickles of warming showers had filled the lack and lightened the weight, we knew it was time to begin.   Then it usually came quickly.  With the showers came little light this time and we got stuck halfway up.   The bulb remembered other such occasions. The stem was pleased but less the  impatient flower.

  Their spurts of thought were not as pleasant to hear that year!   'Why can't I come higher yet?   Why do not the clouds relent?   Where did the life-giver go again?'   'Is it time yet?'   On and on it went, hasty in tone, worried of missing the mark or a shortening of an already brief glory.

The first really warmer day was greeted with our showing, part one.   Being rather reserved, the sun had more convincing to do before we could bask in our best.   Then finally the next passings proved true and we opened up to know all the admiration of the  housed town.   They knew our yellow and white and violet and came to enjoy our glorious rising.  Complete at long last!  Now the clouds could not harm us, their work only served to lengthen our time.   Cool evenings and showers drew out  further rising still.  Only some elder bulbs knew the height was beyond our previous performances.    Passings came and went.    The gardeners and the visitors turned their attention elsewhere.    Only insignificant leaf could remain and only incognito.   The bulb remembered the height and soon was lost to the rocking.

Chapter Three:  The Softening 2

We come with no bloom, we the makers of upward mobility.   Our tools are the impatient nature of wind, rain, snow, creeping roots and creatures of all sort.   We are the committee of varying tasks, we the drivers  accomplishing one end.    Without  our wind and rain, the tree bark would hold its shield still, hardened against icy blasts, and too hard to give growth to stem and leaf.   Without seed and insect, rain and wind, the soils in all their peculiarity would not break loose from snow's grip to allow us  in.   But  rain in softest showers over days coaxes the bitter  earth to hear spring's calling forth.

Finding space at last, bulb and seed  then crack open as the soil  had relented before them and releases the life within.   Growth begins, heat is released, and then burrowing , plunging,  groping--- plant life begins  its search for light.   Those other unseen paler forms, the workers of unheralded force poke and root their way down, down….  while all else turns upward and outward.    It is their hidden work,  their holy agenda.

Light,  our life-giving,  heat-bearing  hope just around the week's turn, awaited all.   Our noblest member,  He often reminds  the ancient ones of seasons past and restored hope in spring's future.  He bears only a sheer shadow of himself, His glory not yet full.    The duet of sun and shower revives them all.   Trees,  their brittle bark split to free the bud and join the mighty chorus,  soil shifted to permit the stem, each breeze, the gardeners labor, the critters' toil – all do their share to make the softening's symphony ring out.    The conductor at long last steps forward for the Rites of Spring….

The other softeners are pushed back from the song, but they preside with time, when time does its work .   The queue of plant and animal life to be taken away, the mound of it unthinkable but demanding its day.   The millers of decay churning onwards to bring nutrients and softness to the soil.   Yes, they have their day, the worm and the warmth, they serve us all in kind.