The bud stands for all things

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers from within

Galway Kinnell
St Francis and the Sow

Morning mist and sharp frost, keeping company with the Moon set in a deep blue sky. I’m glad I remembered my gloves. And I notice the life-channelling veins in leaves, and berries galore, and toadstools, and that a pheasant in the field appears to be meditating. And buds. I notice buds: now, at this time of the year, on this frosty Autumn morning, as though certain elements of life simply can’t wait to get on with living – risk of being nipped notwithstanding.

I took off a glove and hovered my warm hand over the ice crystals settled on one of them – I don’t know what kind. The ice melted, of course, and I wondered and wondered about how ‘everything flowers from within.’ And felt very tender …

As Galway Kinnell continued:

… sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on the brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within …

The bud stands for all things … everything flowers from within.

see also: Yes, everything revisited