Spring Journal: Two, yet not two

The valley awakens to purple fire.

In hollows where last week’s snow has melted, hundreds of snow crocuses pierce the thawing earth like tiny flames. Rising from soil still heaving with frost, each bloom is a defiant flag of royal purple and white, crowned with saffron-gold stamens. Their stems, no longer than a child’s thumb, lift their offering from the winter-weary grass toward the growing light.

These brave pioneers read spring in the sun’s warming angle, in whispered changes of air and soil. Their roots hold an older light, reaching through autumn’s decay and summer’s green echoes to touch the promise sealed within last spring’s seed. Now, they shine with that stored light, painting the valley’s slopes in living waves of purple blossoms.

Then, a deeper magic stirs.

As I carefully guide my wheelchair among the blooms, one flower dances—though no breeze moves the morning air.

A single honeybee stumbles forward, fresh from its winter cluster, warm and honey-scented in the cool morning air. It emerges from the crocus like a living jewel—wings shimmering in the gray skylight, body glowing amber, pollen baskets overflowing with golden breakfast for its sleeping hive.

Bee and flower appear separate, yet they are one life breathing. The bee could not exist without the flower’s patient alchemy—transforming earth and light into sweetness. The flower would not survive without the bee’s sunlit dance, carrying pollen’s quiet fire from bloom to bloom. Each exists only in the other’s shelter—two, yet not two.

In this ancient unity, life is reborn again in a thousand tender petals—fierce enough to pierce the frozen ground and rise in waves of purple flame to light the greening earth.