BY JONI TAKANIKOS
March 22, 2017

It’s hard not to be hopeful in spring. It feels like the season where hope is born. Spring is the season of such continual change. It seems the least static of all the seasons. It is easier to stay truly present, watching new lives gaze at the world with force and fascination. Witnessing this presence allows us to reignite the places in ourselves that may have grown stagnant, frozen, or hidden away in the hibernating nature of winter.

What bulbs of color and bloom lie within our psyches ready to break through onto the spring field? Let’s go easy on ourselves in these beginning days of spring. Rather than rushing too hastily forward, let’s take our time to nourish these new shoots. Spring rain can be the perfect musical accompaniment for reading, writing poetry, or simply gazing out the window.

Before the spring is half over, we will find ourselves dreaming of summer. This is a well-ordered menu of our inner and outer nature. Winter dreams of spring, spring dreams of summer, summer dreams of fall, and fall dreams of winter. During these transitions and beginnings, we have the opportunity to fully taste the season upon us, to revel in every daffodil and budding tree, to walk slowly in the warm spring sun, no longer hurried by the colder temperatures of winter. We will ponder what has been gestating within us this winter and finally give birth to its new form. There is also the “driving six white horses” renewal energy of this season. We might start to tackle our to-do lists with joy instead of the weight of obligation. Cleaning out closets in winter is a much different experience than in the exuberance of spring.

I was born in winter and both of my children were born in spring. I really can’t help my fascination for the dreams of spring in winter and the birth of those dreams in the glorious spring.

Max, Jasmine, and Bear, born in spring (Photo by Joni Takanikos)

Spring Fields
for Max

You, my son of early spring
shining so bright,
Lighting up every field near and far,
the star of Venus speaks your language,
symbols of art flow like water over
and around you.
The early spring in you
Lives forever, and its nature floods my heart
whenever I think of you.

Ireland in spring of 2011 (Photo by Joni Takanikos)

Royal Heart
for Jasmine

The throne was yours
Always—Before you
could sit—you reached
for the sky—your eyes
grounded by the heaven
in my heart—this cord
from me to you is golden
and light—shimmering—a triangle
of dawn floating through the sky.

Your kite untethered now,
Soaring through the sky of
your own heaven—grounded in the
womb of your own bright heart,
The full lotus of you unfolding,
Surrounded always by the light
from my heart.

Joni Takanikos gave birth to two amazing children; a girl in May of 1980 and a boy in March of 1991. They give her heart wings through every season of every year.

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