Spring Rituals

Snow lingers on the Catskills as winter retreats
and warmth hovers with the settling of early spring.

Nascent leaves unfold from protective buds.
The soil exhales, damp beneath an empty canopy.

Stark white bloodroot, dappled trout lilies, trillium triads:
transient, insistent—they urge our presence.

An open expanse, momentarily awash in sunlight.

Flowers awakening, flooding the forest floor,
each blossom reaching despite the closing shade,
every bright color defies a world not built for them,
only to recede beneath a growing canopy,
their season swiftly spent—
Not everything meant for you will stay.

Still, next year they will return,
in the same fleeting ritual,
bursting into being,
undeterred by ephemerality.

Brief yet inexhaustible—
this is enough.