Spring has been very VERY late here, and the last pockets of snow are just melting. A few days ago, the hopeful chorus of tree frogs, peepers and wood frogs began to chime, peep and quack from a nearby marsh. Yesterday, I noticed my rhubarb patch thrusting up its first red fists. Like tiny wrinkled babies, rhubarb buds are so squinched and naked that they are beautiful. They remind me of the last stanza of Jane Kenyon's poem, "April Chores":
Like a mad red brain
the involute rhubarb leaf
thinks it way up
through the loam.
All around me, new life it thinking its way up and out. Buds, eggs, tubers, and spores--like our winter hearts--are all longing to expand and grow.