Budding trees spirit the dark sky, yellow lamplight. Their life is thick with history, and they perhaps understand better than we. Out of logic, we create time lines to mark dates before and after, that year, this year--a linear history.
But which of us has not returned to the past, as to an old farmhouse where we grew up, the floorboards now gray and sagging, the fields unplowed? Who has not circled back upon former wounds and dreams and stories?
Each year envelops the year before, making our journey concentric--outward into newness--but not hurried. Each year, a millimeter of movement: the past still near, the beyond still waiting for another season. . .
and another circle of growth, a small newness embracing what has come before, remembering to grow out but not away.