Growing in the Rain

This is the tilting season. Things have gone against the winter. Spring is certain now, but cold has not fled utterly. Some stays. It filters down as rain, against which I have turned an insufficient collar. It has run through hair to scalp, through coat to back, through leather shoes to feet. That tingling rain drips, pelts, and runs on every tiny leaf unfolding on these oaks. It blacks the trunks, subdues the birds, turns solid earth to mud. I hold my breath to hear it rushing in the treetops, soft and harsh -- or is that sound concommitant to growth? All things respond, swell, roll out in this chilly April rain. I shiver into wariness, I too need growth, may find it -- not in water, not in warmth, but, having reached my height, in resolution, in intent, perhaps, in contrast to the woods, refusal to receive the cold, through inwardness, through such reliances and disciplines as all who walk the sodden woods may need in rain, in lingering cold, in seas ons of the heart, in any weather of the turning world.