Looking for the Sun

This week I battled ants in my vegetable beds, planted plumeria cuttings and jasmine in the ground, and hung ferns from our front porch. With each wave of heat that passes, true spring and it’s promise of rebirth, becomes more tangible. I am reminded of this poem “Spring” by Mary Oliver:

And here is the serpent again,

dragging himself out from his nest of darkness,

his cave under the black rocks,

his winter-death.

He slides over the pine needles.

He loops around the bunches of rising grass,

looking for the sun.

Well, who doesn't want the sun after the long winter?

I step aside,

he feels the air with his soft tongue,

around the bones of his body he moves like oil,

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downhill he goes

toward the black mirrors of the pond.

Last night it was still so cold

I woke and went out to stand in the yard,

and there was no moon.

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So I just stood there, inside the jaw of nothing.

An owl cried in the distance,

I thought of Jesus, how he

crouched in the dark for two nights,

then floated back above the horizon.