Snowdrops

Photo credit: jdurham from morguefile.com

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know

what despair is; then

winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,

earth suppressing me. I didn't expect

to waken again, to feel

in damp earth my body

able to respond again, remembering

after so long how to open again

in the cold light

of earliest spring--

afraid, yes, but among you again

crying yes, risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

~ Louise Gluck

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Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe