Flower of grace

A pleasant day today, spent making a special birthday card for my granddaughter's 11th birthday. These special family cards always take me a long time because I go back through all the ones I've made in previous years to make sure I don't repeat a theme. I'm often stuck for ideas but this year the design came easily to me, and I was pleased with the result.

We didn't go out for our daily walk until this afternoon, once the card making was done and dusted, and I was delighted to see some tiny blossoms just emerging from a blackthorn bush along the way. I'm sure they weren't there yesterday! It gave my spirits such a lift to see such a beautiful herald of spring.

The Blackthorn

Of all the flowers that fade there is no flower
Of grace like those white buds along the spears
Of blackthorn trees, in that first springtide hour
While the world’s wrong is still too cold for tears:
Behind us now mid-winter months lie grey,
The fields without one daisy still, the night
Still treading close upon the starven day:
The sun, misliking, cheats us of his light
And we pace carefully, like men grown old
Without their children, down the stony ways:
We chide the season, curse the pinching cold
Of wind-borne hailstones, and our loveless days:
Then break those buds along the bitter thorn,
As on the night’s dead branches buds the flower of dawn.

Michael Thorn