The Hush Before Spring

The frost is a veil that is starting to fray,
At the edge of the woods where the shadows are gray.
The earth is a sleeper who stirs in her bed,
With a blanket of needles tucked under her head.
Deep in the hollow, the Maidens arise,
With dirt on their fingers and dew in their eyes.
The Crocus is shivering, pale in her shroud,
While the Trillium waits for the break of a cloud.
They push through the iron, the ice, and the stone,
With a strength that a mountain is proud to have known.
The Deer are like ghosts in the silver-bark lane,
Their hooves marking time in the soft, melting rain.
They wander the borders where silence is thick,
To the rhythm of pulses—the thrum and the tick.
The buds on the Maple are clenching their fists,
Holding the summer inside of the mists.
It’s the cry in our bones when the winter is through,
The feeling of being both ancient and new.
To stand in the mud with a heart like a spark,
And watch as the blossoms unbutton the dark.
For we are the forest, the root, and the wing—
The bridge that is built in the hush before Spring.