I rescued a few branches of ivy from the wall where they had spent the winter playing dead.
A warm pot, a sunny windowsill, a few days of quiet attention — and from those brittle sticks, something green pushed through.
Alive.
I felt bad keeping them inside, so I moved them to the balcony to breathe some real air and real light.
Then one night, I simply forgot to bring them in.
By morning, the spring rain had turned to snow. The temperature had gone under.
The new buds — those small, brave things — had blackened overnight.
But I wasn’t ready to give up on ivy.
Not on a plant that had held fast through winters that would make this late frost blush.
Spring, as it does, found its way back.
The world remembered green.
And the ivy — it came back too.
From ground that had been locked shut.
From what I had written off.
From what seemed, for all the world, like nothing at all.
Unnamed, unhurried, irrepressible —
life came creeping back.
Hold on.
Spring comes.
Whatever mystery moves through ivy
moves through us as well.
Even in the seasons when we are nothing but bare sticks —
hope is in there, somewhere,
slow and stubborn,
waiting to stir.