“Spring has returned. The earth is like a child that knows poems.”
~Rainer Maria Rilke

These words graced a one inch square space on the lovely calendar I was given as a gift. This calendar, created by the Sisters of St. Joseph, has beautiful artwork and equally beautiful sentiments for each day. I wrote these words down on the little post-it note I was carrying around with reminders of all kinds. Things to pick up. Things to do. All check-off-able actions…..except this one. It was on my list for ruminating purposes.

I wondered at Rilke’s meaning of ‘a child who knows poems’. How does a child know poems in a different way than one who is older? And then I remembered the slow learning of lines from poems when I was a child. Growing up in a small community influenced by their Welsh roots, the memorization of poetry had a high value. There were even competitions within the school systems for poetry and music. The younger children, of course, had shorter poems to memorize while the older classes learned much longer, more complex verse. Each line repeated over and over until it stuck.

By the time we got to the presentation of these poems, most of us were polished, hopefully not speaking too quickly in our fear or excitement so as to lose the intent and flow of the poet. As we practiced our poems at home, we unfolded each line to our parents, like a little gift that was to be rolled out slowly with the finale our sigh of relief at the last word. We waited to see the joy and pride spread cross their faces.

Spring is like that, isn’t it? Those of us who have gardens are seeing this slow unfolding each day of yet another line of the poem. Tiny sprouts eek up and say ‘green’. Tulip and daffodil stems are now speaking a myriad of colors waving in the breeze. The crab apple trees and cherry bushes have opened their mouths to sing ‘pink, pink, pink!’ As I look out the window right now a lilac bush is slowly resonating a pure purple. And I won’t even try to give voice to the pansies.

If all this unfolding, all these words of earth were to come at the same time it would be too gaudy, too Vegas-like. I somehow believe we would turn our eyes from such a bold show of color, of spectacle. It would be too much and we would think this proliferation of growth and possibility to be arrogant.

But when these acts of spring are parceled out to us like a child offering a painstakingly memorized selection of a few, sweet words, the earth invites us into its own humility. It allows us to be present to the rhythm of the seasons that are pure gift, a rhythm that has its own wisdom planted by the Great Gardener. This gift allows us to be reminded that we, too, need not hurry whatever is being born in us. We need only wait, listen and be present to the single shoot, the bold blossom, the perfect poem that is making its way toward the light that calls it forth.

Like a poem and like spring, this growth comes in its own sweet time. Those around are waiting and watching to see it break through, to hear its voice and to nod their affirmation.

Now. Let us begin.