Spring-Time Prayer

After all these months of bareness, the air now holds the promise of new life. The spell has started working on those gangly branches which were previously casting ghostly shadows, stark and eerie against the moonlight. Now there are little spurts of baby green bursting curiously out of wooden fingers, smiling drops of dew. The garden transforms with every passing day as I slip into my pleasurable activity of counting new buds and new sprigs of leaves with sweet anticipation.

It is that time when Nature dips her brush in vats of bright, beautiful paints and splashes the frost bitten canvas with florid hues. Myriad little buds have popped out, their chubby seams bursting with the color of their precious petals, as delicate as an infant's pink-tinted curled fingers. The daffodils cheer the rain and wind, their yellow faces laughing merrily. Herbs crawl out of their withered shells, releasing tiny pockets of flavor as they eagerly wriggle out to be pinched and appreciated. Yummy vegetable seeds gently clamber out of the soil, bearing wispy green feathers, steadily rooting into the soil and reaching out to the sun. Soft cherry blossoms hang in ornate blooms on swooping branches that were weeping till yesterday. I will never understand how the branches can gush with such dainty pink-cotton tufts within one cool night. If only I could cast a spell and hold them on the tree forever.

With the fragrance of Spring bubbling in each atom, with Nature bearing her numerous pretty children in her womb, isn't it utterly cruel and unfair when the Icy chill decides to return, its vampire fangs eager to sink into the fecund Earth? The happy Spring tune dies down, the sun is washed out with angry clouds and hale and flurries threaten our land. Why would Nature allow this? I whimper along with the silent cries of the buds and sprigs in the garden. Mr. Chill, please look at the happy, innocent faces of the cherry blossoms. I beg you to find any trace of mercy to spare them. Please. You had your fun for six long months and we bore your bites patiently. When the bite-wounds are trying to heal and as we await the monochromatic parched Earth to revive, please don't brutally snatch the precious colors away. Please. My fervent prayers. For you see, my nourishment lies in these little cherubic buds.