I mark the seasons by plants. Some connections are obvious, strawberries and honeysuckle in June, apples and pumpkins in October. After the hard freeze in November, time seems to stop. By January, even the kale has given up the ghost.

In deep winter, rhythms cease. Some of us lose our way. Age teaches me little but patience. Sometimes that is enough. Sometimes.

Now in February the ground remains frozen, and will be for another month or two. In a couple of weeks or so, however, impossibly green slivers of grass-like leaves will break through the ice, silver stripes down their middle. A couple of weeks after that, egg-shaped cups of purple and yellow and white will flare open with the sun, exposing bright yellow stamens, the first smell of sex since the world died.

The earliest flowers defy logic, brilliant bursts of color calling bees still slumbering in their hives.

This time of year, I have just about given up on prayer.

The first bright drops of color remind me just how little I know.

This is old--I plagiarized myself from E2.