When that first hard bud emerged

on the lilac tree next to the back door

I almost wondered where it came from.

The icy winter, long and hard and lasting, lasting,

Seemed to seal the ground and decimate

any opening for the slightest shoot.

But there it was, facing me

at eye level, inescapable.

Clinging as it seemed to be,

winter's chains were broken.

How could it not be also with me?

I thought. How could it not be

that the hardness of my own heart -

eclipsing any possibility of a soft soul -

could also send forth a bud, a shoot,

from a place I thought

long dead or didn't even know about?

Nothing ever ends.

Nothing. Ever. Ends.

Or is finished. the green is witness

and wonder, the outward sign

of life infinite and not yet imagined.

And isn't that sacrament?

The outward sign of inward grace?

Well, grace is nothing but a slight shift,

a lifting of a weight I didn't even know

was there. But relieved at its going,

oh inestimably, ecstatically relieved.

Not much different, really

from the downy new bud on this lilac tree

or the fuzzy leaf bursting out now

everywhere I look.

And I among them, one other sacrament

emerging from the frozen season.

Winter will be back, no doubt about that .

But with every exhilarating spring

life gets larger

without and within

like the reaching lilac tree standing sentinel at the back door.