This year, Spring seems reluctant…

 … to claim its space and spread its warmth across the vast prairies.

True, the snow is gone. The day light is noticeably longer. On the drive to work, you might see four, five, six red-tail hawks perched high in the still-bare trees, waiting for breakfast. One morning last week, I even saw a bald eagle. They always seem to draw forth a sense of awe.

The fields are still empty, corn stubble brown to the horizon. You almost need to pull to the side of the road near a coulee to confirm that the greenish hue of the willows isn’t a figment of your imagination, that the bare branches bud with more than wishful thinking.

Perhaps that is the message of this in-between time of the year, before fields yield crops or bushes, leaves. 

Perhaps it is this liminality that catches in your throat and surprises your eyes with tears, that causes you to suddenly remember people or songs or scents or scenes that gift you a moment’s reconnection, a past-present-future passage promising not only Life, but resurrection.