Madison, Wisconsin is chilly and spitting rain on this Tuesday afternoon. One would hardly believe it is Spring.
But I know without looking that a crocus blooms in my sister's yard in Connecticut and the crabapple is preparing to bud.
Thinking about crocuses I wonder about those under the driveway that won't be coming up this year. Life is so busy I'll wager she never dug them up before they paved.
Their lives were a gamble anyway as guests always parked on the old gravel where they lifted their purple heads and the blooms could be hard to see.
But the ones that live still live and the proof of life and God is not diminished by the loss of a flower.
This is the law of gardens.
Because the paved-over bulbs won't die exactly, but become part of the secret alchemy of soil, in cahoots with worms and perhaps a hungry vole or two who will be glad to discover an unexpected gift.
On the way to Madison hurtling down I-90 under cloudy skies I kept boredom at bay with tunes and strong peppermint gum and the wild unrepeatable imaginings of my mind. When those failed to serve, AJ phoned home for messages, and a mutual friend told me the inconceivable had finally occurred. Your long wait was over.
I choked some words into the walkie talkie and my bandmates and I pulled over into a gas station to gape round-eyed at the moment and get our minds around
the saw that cut compassionately through your sternum the hooked needles that lovingly mended your vessels the pump that carried your blood in that brief interim when, for the only time in your life you were heartless
and the weight of all I'd carried crumbled like pillars and softened in the Wisconsin rain.
While Madison spits rain and I think about crocuses I also ponder your brand new heart, small and strong and bursting with a song of Spring,
this bold, fragile flower replanted in your chest by barter, life for life --
because they operated under the law of gardens, where when someone cries for a loved one gone you welcome back, like an old friend, the laughing breath of a new day.
