A Confederacy of Resilience

in this altered angle of light

Photo by Tīna Sāra

The daffodils’ optimism unsettles me, contradicts the updates from my digital feed. Don’t they know what I know? If they did, they might wear a muddier hue.

To say nothing of the peonies—those stalwarts with their un-wrackable nerve. Just this morning, I found them upright and glistening where once there was nothing but hard, nubby ground. What folly to stand there, as though they could imagine a future afternoon in bloom.

And that’s not all.

This confederacy of resilience honors no boundaries. It opens, flies, builds wherever it wants to, blending genres of melodies wherever it goes: the double-time jazz of Northern flickers, sentimental hums of mourning doves; flirtatious, longing calls of the red-winged blackbird, all to the backdrop of song sparrow divas throating themselves into a frenzy on still-bare limbs. Every morning a cascade of fortitude tumbling down.

The spring equinox came for a visit, repositioned the slats on the blinds, and altered the angle and timeline of the light. But why? Why bother in these current times? I reach into my pocket and search for a rain check I can hand over to the season. Can’t find one.

I devise escape tactics—passive evenings, streaming on the too-soft sofa. Online shopping sprees. I put on noise cancelling headphones and dare this resilience to get past. I do anything I can think of to avoid witnessing the newborn coo of possibility. But the layers of this particular style of enthusiasm are too well engineered.

Even dusk is up for the challenge of carrying on with the mission. As if on cue, the pond’s resident frogs wake up, crawl out of the muck and sit on jagged mossy rocks. They open their globular eyes and throttle out their plea.

The dirt stirs.

The stars re-arrange themselves, and do not die in doing so.

What does this worn world know that I don’t know?

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-Thank you for reading.

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