The Promise

It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! ~Mark Twain

Enveloped in white, the Iowa earth seems to breathe a sigh of relief as her winter blanket slowly melts away. Record snowfalls, frigid temps and seemingly endless days of low hanging gray clouds add up to a long, bleak, memorable winter.
But now...
the snow is melting.
the ground is showing.
the sun is rising earlier and setting later.
the season is changing.
the promise that there is life under the frozen ground is real.
this winter, I was fooled at times into thinking that spring would never come.
that the snow wouldn't melt and the icicles would become permanent fixtures stretching from my eaves to the ground.
the endless gray sky clouds blurred my vision and perspective.
we know that we know that we know that the seasons always change; that spring follows winter.
yet somehow in the middle of it all, we lose sight of facts and are dictated by appearances.
since we don't have x-ray vision we can't perceive the dormant plants nestled safely in their winter cocoons waiting to be called up from their subterranean homes into the light and air of a warm spring day.
all we see all winter is what's on the surface...snow and if there's not much snow, dirt.
but the promise is there.
buried under earth.
the promise of life.
the promise of renewal.
the promise of more than meets the eye.
hope.

Awake, thou wintry earth -
Fling off thy sadness!
Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth
Your ancient gladness!
~Thomas Blackburn