Angels in April

Then the explosion.
In the night, the wind would go around to the south. It was a soft wind, moving the tops of the bare trees, but not giving the deathly cold rattle of winter to the branches. In the morning, put your feet out of bed, and the floor was warmer than it had been for months. Go outside and there were new sounds. First, a faint, rustling restless sound, always familiar, always half forgotten, always a new discovery. It was the sound of running water, a thousand trickles on all sides as the melting snow began to form streams, seeking lower ground, beginning a journey to the far-off sea.     -   Ben Logan “The Land Remembers”

Ostara, spring equinox. 
Always, it seems to come in the night - that reversal in the wind. Banshee wail or gentle sigh - either, or both, but it smells wet and fresh. Mud, earthworms, snow melt. We step outside, lift our faces, breathe it in and feel the cobwebs clearing.
Life. It’s happening all around us. Grass greening, pussy willows budding. That incredible cacophony of morning birdsong in the yard. And it seems possible, doesn’t it, that everything we’ve heard is true? Life doesn’t end at all, because here it is. Again, and always. Reshaping the landscape of the hill and the creek, our faces, our minds. Rolling, rushing forward.

Witchy folk believe in the thinning of the veil at Samhain, but I feel angels in April. I think, if I could see them, they’d have their hands in the dirt, tilling and planting. Lift the soil to the face, smell of it. Pinch the seed between weathered fingers, plug it into the warm and waiting earth, and understand, all over again, how life goes on.
I like to think, too, of Mary Magdalene at the tomb while she ran the gamut from sorrow to disbelief -and then to joy, lighting her face, bubbling from her lips. Life. Life after death, the path made clear, the message resounding enough to have echoed through the generations all the way to us. 
Just a blink in eternity, and here we are. 
And it’s spring again. 
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Deep breaths, mindfulness. The touch of sun on your face and the wind’s fingers in your hair. Life isn’t only good, it goes on. 

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