Praise Song for the Coming Budburst

It looks like a mistake, like something left behind as fall moved into winter. The framework for a leaf gone by, perhaps, or the false start of some living thing that never grew into itself.

It is not a mistake.

There was no error in its planning and none in its purposes.

All winter long the brown bud will sleep. While the cold crow calls into the gray sky, while the wet leaves blacken and begin their return to earth, the brown bud is waiting for its true self to unfold: a beginning that in sleep has already begun.