Not Yet Born

April 2, 2022

Basking underneath bare trees,
Face kissed by the barest breeze,
Gentle sunshine now descending:
Winter isn’t never-ending.
The leaves have not yet filled the sky,
Not yet born, already die.
I lay upon the almost green
And wait in spring’s sweet in-between.

Written at Corhaven, Virginia.

What if waiting wasn’t something to escape, but a season in its own right, a thing to appreciate and enjoy and not merely suffer through? I always want to advance to the next thing, already real in my mind. But when I arrive, I recognize in retrospect the good of the previous season that I missed, so eager to move on. In life we go through many cycles of birth, growth, death, fallow time waiting for the next sowing and the next birth–something a gardener sees annually in vivid form. Gardening has helped me become more comfortable with the in-between. As much as I may want to jump from fall harvest to spring blooms, I know they’re only possible because of what happens in winter. The cold, bare stretch is a necessary precursor to new life. And time after time, no matter how unlikely it seems on the nastiest winter days, nature brings forth spring. It just takes time.

I’m in a personal season of something having already died, and the new thing which will be born isn’t yet there, though I have glimpses of what is stirring and may come to be. This feels like the hardest part: waiting, unsure of what will grow, or if anything will. What if this death doesn’t lead to something new and splendid? What if I’m stuck here forever? I just want to fast-forward to the time when it is all figured out. My spiritual director encouraged me to ask God for an image I could hold as a sign and reassurance in this season. A few weeks later, I was driving down the street in my leafy neighborhood, taken with the ‘not yet’ of the towering trees. Blossoms and buds studded the branches, casting the neighborhood with the golden first green of the poet. I know from experience in a few weeks time this shine will fade to a canopy of monotonous green leaves, but for a little while everything is bright. I cherish this time each year, a time of unfolding beauty, where each day a neighborhood stroll reveals some new flower poking its head up. The transition doesn’t last long, and it isn’t something to endure but to savor. I had my image.

A week or two later I was at my monthly Coracle retreat, sitting in a treehouse enjoying some slow, quiet time with God. I was just ready to pack up my things and tromp back through the woods to the house where a group was waiting, when I looked up and was caught by the sun and the trees, and these lines came out in a few seconds, fully formed faster than I could write. Sometimes that happens. I think of this as a companion poem to the one I wrote (or started writing: it may not be finished) at the previous Coracle retreat. Tracking seasonal progress, one sign of spring at a time.