The Crocus

Among a number of tall slender pieces of grass in the overgrown garden by the drain of the gutter well, a crocus emerged – blue petals opened around a bright golden stamen. The crocus came first, announcing the arrival of Spring with the vernal equinox and the sun coming up in Aries. She was the sign of the stirring of nature from all within that had died with Winter, the stirring full of eager anticipation to burst forth into the world once more in all their glory, to celebrate their beauty and their gifts of life, to sing of the great life that had come yet again, the renewal after the death, the resurrection from out of the tomb. 

The crocus at the corner had come out of death, presenting the spirit of life in its blueness, in its golden eye; she told me all I really needed to know. First and foremost, the bloom struck me to the core of my soul with its beauty, and my soul found in the flower’s beauty a sympathetic force, inspiring my soul, elevating my soul, empowering my soul, charging my soul to push my soul into the foremost activity of my entire existence right there on the spot, standing at the edge of earth’s soil, then kneeling down to peer at it closer, studying her beautiful nature, observing her subtle moves in the day’s light breeze, as if the winds themselves had slowed upon her bloom to caress her, not destroy her, to love her, not harm her. 

The winds knew about the crocus bloom. And I was adoring the crocus. Sunlight fell tenderly upon her. It felt as if everything in the area of the crocus was turning their best ways to her and showering her with all the substantial goodness they could muster. Within everything there was a mixture of stuff; the best stuff rose to the surface for the crocus, leaving the worst stuff behind, which was the stuff to throw away, that which was there, but that which wasn’t there in the end, because only the crocus was eternal and all that was in keeping with the Crocus Way, like the soul, elevating itself as I examined the Crocus. As my soul separated itself from all the other gunk it was immersed in, attracted to the heavenly beauty of the crocus, my entire being was rendered lighter, less dense; it was as if I lost the hard and fast definitions of my bodily form and dissolved into the winds and the air, melted into the warmth of the sunlight. The soul recognized itself in the presences all around me and in so doing was able to commune with them, like feeling home again, greeted by a tender caring host. 

This was Spring again! And the crocus told me so.