After what feels like an eternity, spring, as they say…has sprung.

The trees are turning green, the birds are chirping, the sun is staying up longer and it’s getting warmer. This stuffs all pretty great, you know, if you’re into that kind of thing. And really, after a year of post-apocalyptic winter, who isn’t ready to do some bloomin’?

With spring comes new beginnings. But this year, maybe it’s more appropriate to call it the end of wasted beginnings. Sure, we still have the coronavirus-pandemic to contend with. And no, it’s not in the rearview mirror just yet. But we moved it to the backseat, and it’s getting closer to the trunk.

It’s been hard. We’ve all been affected in ways we have yet to understand.
And we’ve all lost people; almost 550,000 across our country, and over 2,600 in our state.
There’s a song that comes to mind from a Victor Hugo play about some pretty unhappy French people.

“There’s a grief that can’t be spoken.
There’s a pain goes on and on.
Empty chairs at empty tables.
Now my friends are dead and gone.
Here they talked of revolution.
Here it was they lit the flame.
Here they sang about tomorrow.
And tomorrow never came.”
I can relate to those words in more ways than I care to think about, and I believe that’s probably true for many of us. But you know what? The sun is shining today…
Kids are back in schools. They’re back to running up and down basketball courts and all over baseball fields. Restaurants are back to full capacity, and just last week the governor allowed musical performances to start happening again. And you know what that means…

Karaoke, baby!

(I rock a mean cover of “the Gambler”, just putting that out there…)
If you’re familiar with that particular play about unhappy French people, then you already know the next verse of the song…
“From the table in the corner,
They could see a world reborn.
And they rose with voices singing,
And I can hear them now!”
How about you; can you hear them singing? I know I can. It’s time to get out there and get back to living. We owe it to the empty chairs at our tables. It’s time to rise with voices singing.
As one of my favorite poets once said, “not to begin…but continue.”

It’s time to start continuing, because, after what feels like an eternity, spring, as they say…has sprung.

– Matthew Young. Hashtag Lewisburg City Paper. #130. April 2021.