A-Maying ... Third Spring in Lightspring Glen

Fern-Fairy Ring beside Emerald Pond

As a passionate lover of the four seasons and their slow, unceasing spiral dance, it comes down to Spring if I had to choose my favorite one. This year's extra-slow-motion emergence from Winter allowed the most delightful  savoring of its arrival, even if at times we got antsy to shed clothing-layers and stop needing to turn on the heat in the morning to throw off the chill. So given this pace, we're barely past that point where the season's first dandelions begin releasing all those wee seed-wishes. The lawn's taken on the appearance of a miniature Truffula Forest (The Lorax!). While not all may be fond of dandelions, those first cheerful, sun-struck flowers always make me smile. I rounded the corner of the house last week and surprised a half dozen goldfinches that had been feasting on those puffy seed-heads. Decked out in their Spring plumage of brilliant yellow and jet-black, they rose up in a twittering cloud of seed-fluff, like so many dandelions taking flight.

It's as wondrous a blessing to be witness for a third time to this Grand Return as it was the first year. In that May, 2013 post, I tried my best to capture what it is to witness the re-kindling of what to me is the land's green fire, Gaia's vernal-essence marvelously offered to us once again. As I sat down at the key board this morning to record some Spring-thoughts, I realized I could do no better than that post, so a bit of it offered a-new:

"Every year at this time of leaf-bud and tender new leaves, the overnight greening of fields and lawns, I go around for days stunned by the infinite shades of green, each one luminous in the sun's strengthening light. It's an amazingly vast palette that delights my eyes and fills my senses. And though I often try, my best writing efforts prove inadequate to offer a fitting description of this visual feast." (http://notesofanearthpilgrim.blogspot.com/2014/05/spring-voices-at-lightspring-glen.html)

Being the Resident-Human of Lightspring Glen is a role I've embraced from the beginning both whimsically and earnestly.  Over these May weeks it has been my privileged delight to again celebrate this magickal Return.

Though I often turn to Mary Oliver to round out my thoughts, it is the Transcendentalist poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose poem sings in my heart this day....

Spring 

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         

   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         

   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

   The glassy pear tree leaves and blooms, they brush         

   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.