Ajayan

“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” The great Romantic poet PB  Shelley cast it not merely as a question in his Ode to the West Wind, but as a quiet assurance that despair is never the final season. Winter may strip the world bare and linger, but beneath it, life quietly bides its time.

But Pablo Neruda has reminded us, “You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot keep Spring from coming.”

At Ampthill in Bedfordshire in the UK, this cherry tree stood once in surrender by mid-November after autumn claimed its leaves and then came the cold winter to test its patience. With spring arriving now,  uninvited and unstoppable, there are only flowers on this tree.

And when spring comes, it does not knock; it blooms, it spills, it transforms, leaving all in awe. And this cherry blossom reminds us, again  of those Neruda lines: “I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”