Blue Ridge Awakening

My 30th year was like early spring

in Virginia’s Blue Ridge,

when trees gathered energy for growth

in a time before leaves

and white trillium and dogwood blooms

signaled return against forest floor and canopy,

like late stars in a night sky edging toward dawn.

Walking those woods was a care-less thing.

The rising force fed my legs

so they sped off the ground

as if gravity had taken a holiday.

Sunshine felt it too,

bounding ahead and behind

as we climbed Old Rag

through last year’s leaf litter and

new ferns curling outward.

I too was awakening from a long winter

and held dear my early flowers,

seeing them against the shadows

that still held sway.

It was a precious interlude

free of the call to do or succeed.

I’d broken with the past,

tapping funds from my time in science

to follow tenuous currents

drifting toward the main channel.

And in that season of arising,

I greened to a sense of self

expressed in stone walls and sculpture,

trail building, body work, spiritual paths and more.

Having waited three decades for that year,

      I let it live me to the full.