For a while last spring, I was feeling exactly like this picture. My heart overflowed from the imagination of desire, like another sensory system – capturing the texture of your cheek, the surface of your hands, and the unflinching smile in your soft brown eyes, the exact color of rabbit fur.

This week, I told my very wise friend that I was so afraid you were the last spring I would have.  “It was like everything started to bloom – and then there was a late frost, and the blossoms all froze,” I told my friend.

And all of a sudden I could feel that my heart might be keeping a different sort of time, independent of the hours and minutes I hurry through, reaching for the conclusions I need to protect myself from living with hope and disappointment.

Love – tuned to a slower purpose for the cues of its seasons – rises from a deep, tenacious source.  Whatever its shape, it is a very ancient tree – and one that has survived frost-bitten springs and lonesome autumns before.  And everyday, with the patience of winter, it is gathering new growth for its next flourishing.