I knew it to be truly spring when the alchemy of the season blasted my senses. The Sky was a hue of blue with a tail of white stripes. The smell of mud and crunch of icy snow outlined by dirt crackled loudly.

 Spring makes you breathe, you want to inhale the lovely signs of life before your eyes after having hibernated to a small beat during the cold months of white. Spring designs your senses, rearranges your small walled up despairs.  It punches them open with spirit to let them flow out and empty itself only to be filled by possibility.

This Spring, I have sands shifing and waters dividing emerald blues to hues of dreamy carribean blues. Lake Michigan holds a cacophony of color. What happens at the begining of spring is somewhat of a ritual, I become laden with thoughts of bettering my soul. My minds eye looks back at miles that had passed me by, but this year there is deep sense of alteration.

 I lost my mother on my best childhood friend's birthday, it was the begining of April a month that has never been my favorite. I lost my grandfather in Spring, Bled at nine in April, and lost my way in April tumbling down to the bottom until I hit the end of that month. So on that note April, has always been cruel. A colorful yet beautiful tormenting month.

This spring still holds the same, I breathe in and find the possible of joy. I let out the grief and take in the lessons at the same time. Things make more sense now as I walk quietly along. My shifing sands are now rumbling and my passage of time is quickening. The change of the guard is taking place, we are no longer kids and my parents are forever gone.

My father holds a brief conversation when I see him, he tires trying to remember what to say. Fading in his chair, the white socks with teva strapes. Those feet I think, swollen with Edema use to once house wingtips, that were bumpy with ridges and smelled distinctive. They were put on a with silver shoe horn that had once been my grandfathers. I once remember wearing them and sliding about on the bedroom floors. Examining each crevice of the shoes design, trying to figure out why with such a nicely made shoe would they use such cheap shoelace. Even than it was up to me to figure out why this fashion clashed.

I can hold things in my mind visual, most viseral things are only let out by sights of color and landscape. Spring is the season of endless discovery. Though the flowers bloom and the weather holds a steady temperate beat, I find more solace at the start of spring. The dirt lets out its winter smell of mud, when the color of the great lake before me divides into colors of water and ice the blues I chant, the blues. The lights of the spring are deep and slight at different angles in Northern Michigan. I can smell the sand and hear the whisperings of the summer grasses that have yet to appear but are coming for the wells within the beautiful earthan landscape that lays near my home.

My shifting sands are deep, some moments painfuls. I am cusping the menopause of hot flashes and homicidal feelings mixed with the lovely life that the well of spring is nourishing within me. Now, I no longer have a measure to check experiences with but my peers and siblings. I now wash my parent who no longer remembers, missing his lost bride.

But life is springing within me. Spring is now coming to greet me with a new stand and map of a journey that is changing.  I think I have just gone through a valley and maybe hitting some flat in roads that I can stop and rest with peacful thoughts and an open mind appreciating the view.

 It shan't be long before a shillayly will help stand me right up, it won't be long but whilst its time, I shall breathe in the greens of the grass, and swim through the blues in my mind, hold my arms open to the blue white tailed skies and greet spring with true hopes that it will spring eternal.