Hope

Rainy, soggy January interlude before the coming freeze,
not what I would call a beautiful day.
But, here I am alive, with faculties to search out beauty
and the bit of green I need to make it until spring.
With chilled hands, cold water running down my back,
I part the leaves to find the treasures.
Foamflower, Jacob's ladder and Virginia waterfleaf,
vibrant against the browns,
winter no match for their tenacity. 

It doesn't look like much, a dried-up flower stalk from a small, last-season planted oak-leaf hydrangea,
reminder of what was and what will be.
Memory stirs imagination to recall the late-summer brightness in the shady shadows of my front yard.
Last to put out new leaves in spring, 
reminder that beneath all appearances,
we hope not in vain.

A few tiny, almost insignificant, catkins,
first of this hazelnut's young life.
Enough to pollinate the even
more obscure female flowers as they open,
a few months from now?
No matter, for growth happens at its
own pace, in its own time. Sometimes faltering, 
sometimes subject to forces beyond its control,
always moving toward the promise of fecundity,
sending its offspring out into the world.