Spring was here.

I know it was.

I have the calendar to prove it.

There were half-days and false starts

and light snow into the first week of April,

but it was here all the same.

The birds knew it,

even if the trees did not.

But the birds are, let’s face it, tourists —

half the year here, half the year there —

and they are conversant in the language of change.

They see it coming

and are not surprised to see it go.

They witness the world with very different eyes.

They are creatures of transition.

We who are knee-deep in change do not recognize it as it happens.

If you stand in a river and cannot see the shore,

will you know it is a river,

or only that there is water lapping at your legs?

We have seasons thrust upon us,

and if they only last a week,

we may never know they’ve come and gone.

Spring is such a simple word, so easily lost.

There’s no weight to it like winter,

like heavy blankets wrapped around your bones,

or the cold that creeps like ivy along your skin.

Spring is a farewell to winter’s ghosts, a rebirth,

that moment in between.

Perhaps it isn’t meant to last.

Perhaps it’s just an invocation against all that’s come before it,

and like all magic words, once spoken,

has no power except in memory.