bud and branch

walking george, I've been watching spring do what it's named for-- looking closely at the tender small unfurling leaves that sprout so improbably out of a thing that looks for all the world like a dead stick-- suddenly there are living bursts sprung up in irrepressible patches-- it's miraculous. I've been paying attention to the way the trees-- all of them, the maples and other hardwoods as well as the flowering varieties like redbud and crabapple-- flower before they leaf. hanging down from all the branches that arch over my neighborhood streets are clusters of the brightest green tiny flowers, easy to mistake for young leaves, but indeed blossoms. and what does this say to me? that everything is alive that looked dead for so many months-- and alive means, even in the tallest and strongest, deepest-rooted trees, to burst out in blossom when the season comes around, to carry in your secret heart the recipe for most delicate and vulnerable expressions-- that without making them, lush protective shade can't be born to protect from summer's scorch. I too need time to honor the vulnerable, to make the most fragile, unfinished expressions-- young, barely formed, but necessary for further growth.