This chapter has my heart draped in heaviness, though the heaviness it wears like a garment; dressed raw, raw love. The sky and the butterflies are my witnesses. A hum outside drives deep and settles at home, on that sole wooden bench just opposite the brooding fire. I too sit quietly as you fill the shadow next to me. Light: you overrun my soul and swarm the edge of me. Your waking erupts, breaks out of a remoteness foreign to me, in a single stride conquering every outpost of my existence. And so, I fall.

Low blackbird flap and whistle – space, though infinitely wide, hold my hand. Set sail, old friend, I missed your trusted tremble, now passionately disrupting me. Your calling advances through me, through the crust of the earth, as sunlight hails roots to press, and then pulls and pulls the strands of life. Sprouts. And flowers. And trees.

And as buds turn their heads they transform and blossom. I mistake their quiet disposition and overlook their drive to live out an ingrained plan. I slip on my vigilance and observe. The surge so plainly visible over time, yet mysteriously hidden. I lean against bark, and carefully place bare feet on ground, rest eyes and mind. In my innermost I search out the same light that knocks on every bud with its caring and determined capacity to wake the heart of all creation.

Its presence disturbs me. I cannot ignore the call. I want to because my reality I so prudently built is threatened to collapse. I wonder if this is how bud feels before blossom, and if the snowbell knows of its ring before present. The same before-before rings and sings through me. Where is the seed planted that now stirs and responds? And where the roots that quiver outwards? Branches unclad legs, exposed neck, and leaves on fingers and nails. Then turn to touch. Here warmth.

I fail to shake the grain out of my system. I really have no choice, but to embrace and tie my rope to life, now beckoning me to taste fully. I step aside and allow. I open. Life curiously schemes and prepares in hidden cavities, and then bursts forth freely, withholding nothing, smashing out of me, into me, cracking my nucleus to wildly chase the winds and climb the bark and climb the branch and reach the sky, to breath and breath again, and yell „I am“!

So here I am, welcoming spring.