The Gathering Begins Poem by Smoky Hoss

Winter is being washed away.
A movement - heard, not seen -
whispers among the trees,
murmurs on the breeze,
birds on the fly,
animals peering at the sky...
a feeling, not a knowing,
a confidential trust, not a surety.
Nothing ever returns precisely as it was,
resurrection is the only certainty, but
understand this:
all things, all things, are
being made new.
The earth is only a silence
to those too preoccupied to listen, yet
it shall be heard, in time...
The issue of spring will have
it's unity, the aroma of return
is upon the world's breath,
inhaled by everyone,
exhaled and passed along
one to another, the eternal joining,
the gathering, the becoming,
the arriving back, where it all began;
where we always were anyway,
beyond our own brief little interludes
of fleeting time and cold space. For we all
have travelled far, from one end of the universe
to the other, searching, and back again,
never really leaving anywhere.
Now, with dirt and tears on our faces,
snow melting out of our fingertips,
frost falling from our eyes,
we can look and see,
spring, arriving.
It is true. It is
the only reality that has ever been... and
will ever be.

' Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.'
- T. S. Eliot from 'Burnt Norton'