Spring Has Not Yet Sprung

I woke up this morning to snow falling outside my window. But it’s April 18: the sun should be shining and the birds singing. All this about coronavirus can be overwhelming, enough to make me not get out of my warm bed.

But then there are these daffodils yesterday in my yard, which remind me of sun, of tennis balls, of mustard on hot dogs at the fair, of marshmallow peeps, of my mother laughing at my little boy fitting an entire bunny peep in his mouth.

And poetry, which has helped the human race pause, reflect, and survive. “Let us go on, cheerfully enough, this and every crisping day, though the sun be swinging east, and the ponds be cold and black, and the sweets of the year be doomed.

-Poem excerpt from Mary Oliver, “Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness”