I Hear the Tree Buds Singing

In a broken world, find beauty, virtue, and the future on a twig

White Ash, Butternut, American Basswood / © Bryan Pfeiffer

SOME advice for winter: Dress in layers, watch the wind chill, and notice the bud. Far more than an inert bump on a twig, a bud is a compressed expression of time and space, of songbirds in treetops, butterflies in gardens, and bears in a forest.

When it opens and unfurls in spring, the bud is a Big Bang giving rise to an expanding universe of life and experience in nature. So much potential in each bud, so much promise — we too often pass it by. Someone who did not was Emily Dickinson, who wrote: “How soft the fire of the Bud.”

For me, the soft fire begins with variety, advances to knowledge, and expands profoundly by way of imagination. Yeah, all that from a little bud on its twig. I’ll explain.