A crocus. I moved into its bulging protected whiteness, felt its ripeness, was it growing. The stream flowed and I flowed in it, sitting by it, seeing it swell with the melted snow, and it moved on and stayed also where it was. The grass, left naked after the snow, was battered, green but dull, not fresh and sharp as it would be later, and I could feel it straightening after the winter burden, gathering up strength and colour. The spring came on me slowly, slowly.

I worked, too, but more deliberately now, consciously, without the panic or strain of preparation. There was, again, the garden. It was time to clear the space, but the task of clearing was itself the reality, not a job to be gotten through so that the planting could be done. I bent, pulled, dug, tossed to one side the plants of the last year, the aging weeds, building a pile of them, getting them ready to be the next season’s compost, and I felt the earth as I dug into it, felt it cool and moist around my fingers, felt how it was for the roots of the plants, protective and nourishing and comfortable.

I returned to cutting wood, a little each day, seeing how it was not only for the next winter, but for this time, too. The muscles in my upper arms and chest pulled as I swung back with the axe, and my back and legs and arms went into the forward swing, and there was a rhythm, not just of the movement but of everything that went into the movement, all the parts of myself, and I could feel them shifting, straining, relaxing, pulling, again and again, and I was wholly the sensation.

I was eating again, regularly and fully, and sleeping deeply; there was a kind of glaze around what I was doing, and I was alone with the action, so that everything outside it was out of focus, not quite real. In turn, I came to everything, and it seemed that nothing was unknown to me.

A bird flew into my vision and I watched it, seeing it moving, restless or resting on a branch, until it flew on, and I watched it as long as it was in view, seeing it dip and swerve on the unseen currents of air, following some hidden path of its own, and I followed it, was it, felt the currents, flying myself, for just those moments.