I’ve been watching the dogwood outside the sewing room window all winter. For most of that time it was sticks and nubs, and a few white fluffs of duck feathers caught by the tree in one of our high winds. Somehow, those fluffs managed to hang on for the rest of the winter.
I can’t see them now, though, because the tree is on the edge of full bloom. This photo was taken yesterday, when the blooms still had that lovely light green tinge on them. Today they are snow white, and any duck feathers still tucked into a safe haven of twigs are well camouflaged.
All winter that tree looked dead; it was hard to believe that life would ever return to its dry, gray branches. Of course all it took was a wee shift in sunlight and a few drenching rains, and voila! Dogwood blooms bursting everywhere along newly greened branches.
I just need to remember this promise of supple life when my own leg-trunks and arm-sticks are stiff with winter, when my thinning hair grays by the day, when the cold air bites deeply into my bones.
Oh, of course I’ll never be 20 again (thank goodness!), but there is always life in one stage or another, everywhere I look.
It’s recognizing it that’s the big challenge.
“leg trunks and arm sticks stiff with winter” … such an image, so true! Are you really—completely—sure you’d not like to be 20 again? I have to admit to the slightest twinge, now and then, of the wee desire to be a young sapling again.
But beyond all that, lovely, so lovely, to see your dogwood in bloom. Thanks!
On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 8:18 PM, Grace-full Thoughts wrote:
Hmmm. Nah, not twenty. Thirty-five, maybe …
The only way I’d want to be younger again is if I get to keep my old brain with all its experiences and memories. I’d really hate to lose those.
Wonderful meditation on the Resurrection flower!