Trembling with Spring

Spring. What is it? To spring is to leap and bounce. A spring is a rippling water source. A spring is a Slinky, a coiled bouncer, a support for my mattress. To spring is to be indulgent ("I'll spring for that").

 

Spring. Sprang. Sprung. Gerard Manley Hopkins created sprung rhythms in his poetry. He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle…. It might as well be spring.

 

Oh, all RIGHT! Spring. Spring is here. Or maybe spring is here. Too early by half, say the cranky people, who also say, "You'll be smiling on the other side of your faces come the May blizzard, when all your nascent species tulips will turn to limp rags under winter's last hurrah."

 

How I spent my spring vacation: I berated myself for not going outside to rake, to prune the clematis, to cut back the rampaging vinca minor (why didn't I listen when they said it was invasive?), to admire the crocuses and other optimistic little guys poking their colorful heads through the neighborhood oak leaves that all ended up in my little front garden.

 

And then, before I even have the chance to acknowledge that spring has indeed, once again, sprung—it is over. The pretty bulb garden moves on to another phase. The weather goes from still-too-cold or a-little-too-wet-for-my-taste to the steamy hot days of summer.

 

Life is moving more quickly than it used to, have you noticed? Time's rhythms have changed. And the effect on us is that we are all whirling to this new rhythm, faster and faster. When you spin a spoked bicycle wheel very quickly, the spokes blur with the speed. Then, within that blur, you can see a slow-moving echo of the turning spokes. Could it be that within our own whirling, spinning race to keep up with the new rapid-time that we live in—within that spin we are ourselves experiencing a very slow, leisurely echo?

 

Time is moving more quickly, as are our lives. But within that new speed is an equally new languid quality to our internal rhythms. Could it be? Can we now say that everything fast is slow again? Picture again that image of the spinning bicycle wheel. The blur of the spinning spokes gives rise to the beautiful slow circling at the heart of the wheel.

 

Something to contemplate as spring comes springing by us once again.

 

 

Copyright 2012 Ann Tudor

www.anntudor.ca
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com