Patience?

My garden does not wait though  frogs lie in the mud beneath the glimmering ice. Cold, near lifeless, they exist in a patient limbo between life and death, so close to either, yet neither.

Unlike a bird it worries not for sustenance
as it waits.

 Snowdrops refuse to wait. The fleshy bulbs warm themselves and the ground around them, demanding that Spring comes to them. With independence not common, they send green shoots to meet the coming season, heeding not the calendar pages, splitting brown earth, pushing debris aside, green sprouts absorbing what sun sneaks into our February days.

I look toward a gray sky, broken by the twisting, curving, spreading crown of a tree. The tree has silently waited through the cold winds of winter. It does its part to protect the ground, the insects hidden in its crevices and the birds who seek refuge among its limbs.

These birds are probably the first to notice the gentle swelling on the tips of each tree's branches. brown at first then gaining a reddish hue, the preamble to green.  Soon I will see a blush of red on the hillside of maples. It is the blush that comes just before the burst of Spring.
    Spring, yes it will come and soon.  Soon gloves, clippers and trowel will be commonplace in my garden.  Soon my legs will stretch and my shoulders will ache. Weeds will be piled and I will be cursing the heat.  The heat. I long to curse the heat.

But for now, I look in from beyond my garden. I will look in and like the frog, I will wait.