What To Think About When You Think About Spring​

Spring is my favorite time of year in Texas.

After a dreary winter, the colors come back. The birds are out. The days last longer. The breeze is light. The air is cool.

The leaves come back on the trees around my ranch. Suddenly, the woods are full and dense. The grass comes in. The bluebonnets flood the fields. Soon enough, blackberries will be ripe for the picking.

But as beautiful as it all is, there lurks beneath a kind of darkness.

Phillip Larkin’s bittersweet poem captures this darkness well:

The trees are coming into leaf

Like something almost being said;

The recent buds relax and spread,

Their greenness is a kind of grief

The inherent grief is the passage of time. Each season brings new life, yes, but also marks the cessation of life. It’s a painful truth, the poem points out, written in the rings of the tree. Winter is dead and over…and all of us a little more so, too.

Think back to those cold winter afternoons where you didn’t want to go outside. Where you didn’t want to do anything at all. Where you said to yourself, I can’t wait for this to be over. You weren’t killing time…that was time killing you.