Like the tentative first buds

of flowers unfolding as the answer

to winter’s desperate prayers,

signs of hope fill the spaces

around us in peopled clusters

of unmasked optimism.

Done with the dormancy

of lonely nights and cloistered days,

through with life’s lassitude and loss,

we welcome the verdant

weight of blossoming wonder,

the density of new growth—

Fresh ideas. Future journeys.

New affections. Next directions.

Grateful to be together, remembering

how to love, we celebrate, hoping

the season of darkness has passed.

It is finally time for shared elation,

as life silences our wintered fears

that this, our Spring, might never come.

by Anne McCrady

This poem first appeared in Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, Vol. 18.

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