closer now / by Christina Rosalie

Hunger brings them close, but I don't see them at first; I'm at the sink filling a water jug for the chickens, watching the water spill across the dirty dishes left for later and then I glance.

The sunlight moves, and in the shadows they're there. Six deer, maybe more. They move like quiet trees, they move like shadows. Their fur is dappled with the sun. They cannot know that inside, on the windowsill the branches I've brought in are blooming now. Forsythia, yellow and urgent with what's to come.

Outside I walk across hard packed snow, the mud turned back to ice; my breath rising in clouds, my nostrils flaring in the cold. 14 degrees and it's nearing the end of March.

This is when I forget everything (dandelions, the smell of lilacs, the song of the peepers): just before it happens

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Some inspiration I've been finding:

This gorgeous painting (and all of her paintings really).

My Heart Wanders. Don't you just want to pick this book up and thumb through it?

This poem. You simply must go read it.

And these words. So true.

Where are you finding inspiration? What are your days like now in early spring?