The mountains reach up to touch the sky from the farmlands and the valleys below.
The day is a tasty mixture of early Spring, the cool of ice cream melting on soft lips and the corn flake rustle of oak leaves on a nearby tree. This day is filled with sunshine gold, passing airy cloud and winddreams of Spring still slumbering in the abyss of time.
Our hearing is caressed
with the melt that tinkles down through beige-colored grasses, ferns, and leaves; the
vibrant luxurious green of these everlasting hills is missing for this moment.
Wind stirs and speaks to us of the subdued promise for which we patiently wait. The message speaks of mid-Winter hibernation the essence of Spring's rejuvenation.
Our dreams are quietly and excited by a warm breeze as days filled with fragrant rains, buds bursting forth and tiny brooks splashing rainbows in the sunshine pass before our eyes. We see the land laid out in a pastel carpet of wildflower colors, laced and trimmed in hundreds of green hues of newborn leaves, young sprouts, grasses and ferns all lined with the earth-brown richness of renewed soil and animal life.
Meandering rivers flow as canvasbacks and mergansers wing their way back to our world as the sweet choruses of mobile flower gardens touch our ears.
We deep-breathe the beauty of it all as it fills every available space of our minds, bodies and souls.
The sweet breath of our dream world expires but the promise is held-springtime fresh in our deepest heart as we turn into the month of February and its celebration.
Copyright © 1988-2000 Barbara A. Smith and John G. Hipps. All rights reserved.
This essay was first published February 15, 1989 in the Free-Press Courier, Westfield, Pennsylvania.