The Next Thing to Let GrOw

There’s a sweet spot 

Between winter and spring

Snow still on the mountains

Sunshine finding its way early

The heaviness has lifted,

Buds just starting to show

Brown, gray and gold world

Not yet vibrant green or yellow

A sense of what is coming with

Bits of evidence if you look closely enough

What makes this spot sweet?

Is it the relief of winter passing?

Or the pause before 

The surge of spring?

It has been a strange year.

Yet nature is right on track

Am I?

I have a sense of what’s coming

With some evidence to lift my spirits

My buds are starting to show,

But heaviness remains in my heart

To make space for the new

There’s always a letting go

As I have done so many times before,

Stepping forward, leaving my works behind me.

Always striving to bring the spring

While knowing winter will come again.

Can I accept this eternal cycle?

Without judging myself for never having arrived?

Is this growing up?

Accepting the next thing to let go?

Do I need to grasp so tightly 

To my idea of how it should be?

What if I let what IS instruct me

With watchfullness and listening? 

What if I pause before the surge of 

Stepping in the direction of what I think I know?

Maybe this is just the bud breaking away

As the flower opens toward the sun.

The flower itself is transient

Offering its moment of beauty courageously.

What if I can see my works more like this?

A momentary offering of beauty

Not a striving to arrive anywhere.

Simply, the next thing to let grow.