Crocus
Small faith is good faith
A thought for the last Sunday of February from our garden. My father’s faith.
In the pulpit on a Sunday morning,
he said his faith was limited,
that he could not believe roses bloomed in winter.
“Lo, how a rose….”
A crocus maybe, he said,
sparring with the cold,
insisting on a right to punch frozen dirt aside.
But not a rose!
A crocus,
“like a red-dogging linebacker,
breaking up the last play of winter.”
My father also liked crocuses,
feeling no need to give a reason.
On the way to church we detoured past a
field near the university library.
In the early Spring it was blanketed by crocuses,
purple and yellow, the college colors.
He reserved, though, his true respect for snowdrops.
In our backyard, they always came before the crocuses,
before even the first robin returned,
a date that he faithfully recorded for fifty years.
The robins still return, I have to believe, to that yard.
Perhaps someone is still watching.
And I hope that the snowdrops remain under the kitchen window.
But the field of crocuses at the university
was long ago replaced by a building.
Yes, a rose in winter requires too much faith …
for me at least…
a crocus, though…
or a Snowdrop.