Primavera

Some years, Spring steals in slow and steady, evoking a daily increment of warmed gratitude. Not this year: first it came too early, then thought better of it: a nip of proper winter first would strengthen human gratitude, thought Spring… Now it’s trying again, reminded perhaps that all this Easter stuff is due; and markets must recover… the sunlight curves into that yard or too of sheltered space in the garden where I dare to sit, five minutes of passing sunlight one day, ten the next, and so on.. will the warmth now reach my medicated heart? Botticelli – Marsilio Ficino breathing over his shoulder, some suspect – tried to cram all this into a 2-D version of a moving 3-D world: the spinning top of divine love, passing through three worlds, the physical, mental, spiritual, on the first day of eternal Spring itself. A mighty work of failed success, successful failure, God’s work depicted in a lick or two of fresh paint.. And I, sitting in the sun my fifteen minutes, am Primavera too: sun on chest and legs, upbeat thoughts in mind; and in that world of spirit, the springing stirring of some memory of that world sometimes inhabited, where childlike wonder was the daily norm; and later, that enthusiasm, stirring of the gods within, that takes teenagers towards some ultimate career; then, adult stirrings of the wiser heart: praise; gratitude; and laughter; care, concern; all ancient virtues loved for their own sake; and shining there beyond, a glory and a splendour, a light beyond belief… these, to the wintered heart bring again, the stronger for that testing time, the first green showers of the loving spring of truth.