Spring rains bring on an explosion of wildflowers . . . Green growth is the most delicate . . . Each day is scented with fragrance and sprinkled with colors.
Everything shines.
Appalachian Mountain Country Earth is refreshed . . . spit and polished clean into another Springtime Celebration.
Azure blue skies . . . powder puff clouds . . . a soft sunshine glow . . . Quickly Spring’s promise is fulfilled.
Inside the
course of a few days a bright little knuckle of green grows upward a few inches each day
with its leafy coat wrapped around its stalk like a collapsed umbrella. Gradually but it
quickly unwraps itself like the opening of a parasol. Bright little emerald islands of May
apples with pretty white and yellow blossoms appear to be transformed in a few weeks into
an edible apple just right for the jelly jar.
A shinning red-winged blackbird vents his early spring call and opens up the symphony of this year’s Spring.
The multi-light of colors of the bird’s flicker through the air like rainbow confetti. Butterflies are free and fancy.
A spider’s web stretches between the lower limb of a small evergreen and the grass on the ground. It is a delicate and beautiful wonder of life’s creations.
Spring beauty, marsh marigold, bloodroot, blue cohosh, and buttercups are all out in great profusion.
What a difference they all make for a day.
At no time does the heart seem so alive, so open, than in Appalachian Mountain Country Springtime.
It is our world opening up. It is us being alive to our senses.
Yesterday is only a memory trace. Today is a living moment. Tomorrow is a portal of promise.
Copyright © 1988, 1999 Barbara A. Smith and John G. Hipps. All rights reserved.
This essay was first published April 27, 1988 in the Free-Press Courier, Westfield, Pennsylvania.