The Always of Spring

It’s easy to identify a baby bird; it is the one with the piteous cry, the bed-head, and the unusual body movements. This morning I observed a young House Sparrow sitting in the leafless tree near my screened porch. It let out singular cries, certainly sounding like an attempt at finding its adult. One never came, and after many minutes baby flew away.

Spring is near. I sense it in the position of the sun, in the sound of the birdsong, in the purple flowers popping out of still-brown grass. It is in the forsythia shrub on the side of my neighbor’s house, with the tinge of gold just beneath the surface, like the hint of sunrise when the sky is still dark.

It is in the irises given by a dear friend which spread year-to-year to fill the side garden near the path through my yard, the one taken by my other neighbor and her dog as a shortcut to her side door.

Anticipation is the season. I hear it in the sound of the dog’s bark and the child’s scream as she plays with friends in her backyard. It is most evident at the bird feeders in the flurry of wings and mating cries of adults.

Spring is an exemplar of that which lies ahead. Of the what’s-to-come. Of the there-is-more. Of the there-is-always-hope.

Always.