Anticipation



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          Spring song; E-mail for music


WHEEL OF THE YEAR

Tiny leaves curl up tight
on the new-greening tree.
Winds blow cold in the night;
you come shiv’ring to me.
In the predawn, a show’r
  falls on redbirds in the midst of
     their hymn to God’s glory and pow’r—
as purely do I love
this season, this hour.

Crimson cardinals are first
of the birds to return
to my window. They burst
into music they'd learned
in the tropics while we
  woke to winter, dark and quiet,
    with nature stilled in dreamless sleep
under the crisp white
of the snow, dense and deep.

  Slowly do the signs appear
  that spring is genuinely here,
  so slowly that you start to think
  the sun forgot. Then, in a wink....

There are flowers all ‘round,
every color and size,
and the rabbits we found
tumbled off in surprise.
Comes a cold, rainy day,
  and a night when bits of snow fly,
    We do not mind; it will not stay—
The earth is alive
and the creatures at play.

In the midsummer sun,
limbs are heavy with leaves.
In the fall, one by one,
they float down from the trees.
Then the birds too must go.
  I say, “Farewell, Robin Redbreast”
    and smile at winter, for I know
the earth needs to rest
‘neath its blanket of snow.

  My cozy quilt is filled with down.
  Against a draft, I wrap it tight,
  awaiting by the fire the sound
  I listen for each winter night—
    a wheel creaks on the frozen ground...
      the Great Wheel of the Year goes ‘round.
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THE WHEEL OF THE YEAR is a Neopagan term for the annual cycle of the Earth's seasons. It consists of eight festivals, spaced at approximately even intervals throughout the year. These festivals ... have historical origins in Celtic and Germanic pre-Christian feasts ... the Bronze Age religious festivals of Europe. As with all cultures' use of festivals and traditions, these festivals have been utilized by European cultures in both the pre- and post-Christian eras as traditional times for the community to celebrate the planting and harvest seasons. The Wheel of the Year has been important to many people both ancient and modern, from various religious as well as cultural and secular viewpoints.

In many forms of Neopaganism, natural processes are seen as following a continuous cycle. The passing of time is also seen as cyclical, and is represented by a circle or wheel. The progression of birth, life, decline and death, as experienced in human lives, is echoed in the progression of the seasons....  —Wikipedia