A Fresh and Lithesome Hallelujah

Whatever else you might say, you have to admit they are resilient.

Early in the week, freezing rain sheathed our part of the world with a crystalline cocoon as heavy as it was beautiful. Heavy, beautiful, and perilously dangerous to walk on, but that latter part is another story. And there was a certain sadness to the encroachment. Watching the ice gradually and increasingly dominate them, you could almost see the branches of the trees weary, weaken, and finally succumb to the weight. Where once the sky had seemed the focus of their worship -- arms outstretched in perpetual "hallelujah" -- now the ground seemed their only attention, drooped in embarrassed capitulation. Some couldn't bear it and simply broke off at the shoulder or elbow; but most simply hung there in seeming despair. Frozen, demoralized zombies, unable to hide; unable to move. Joining the mood, the sky itself turned dank and gray -- the sun hasn't been seen for days. It has been as if the entire landscape needed anti-depressants.

But yesterday an amazing resurrection occurred. Temperatures began to climb -- not dramatically, but adequately -- and though the sun is still conspicuously absent, the ice began to relent. Dripping, running, loosening its grip. The twigs and branches, as though cut free from plaster casts, began to shudder and triumphantly rise. What only the day before had looked like a permanent metaphor of defeat -- woody arms hanging useless and limp -- today exudes a virtual song of resilience, branches and buds once more virile and stretching out and up.

And somehow I feel lighter, too, and more alive -- as though I, too, might be capable of some fresh and lithesome hallelujah.