It lived on day in the Second Canticle of Spring, its song voiced by birds, messengers on wing, in proclamation of arrival to new and promised life. She departed on day when the first of spring shone green through recession of winter’s covering snow; appearing in the low bases and shortest blades of wintered grass; a color restored—unseen—beneath snow’s incubating cast that appeared but death to living eyes.
He prayed under sky of veiling clouds that filtered sun into fan of rays that shone as if feathered strokes from soft-wisp brush faint-painted by hand of the Living God. Rays cast in outward spread from hole in Heavens downward into framed touching of earth across horizon of wintered grass awoken in resurrection with God’s promise of new spring.
Birds sang. Light fell, but a sadness remained.
In the sadness—and also hope—he prayed. He prayed that, like the signs manifest—everywhere—in his living day, that the change was not an end but a new beginning: a restoration of life beneath veiling mysteries of a good and loving God.
For this, and her, he prayed.
