First, the 9-minute song, “Springtime Again” by Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Myth Science Solar Arkestra (this band name is *chef’s kiss* perfect) from their 1979 Album, “Sleeping Beauty.”
Then, an artwork and poem about blooming despite it all.
The Artwork: It’s Springtime Again
The Poem: Letter to a Gardener
Why should a seed be shamed
for refusing to grow
in between stones?
Isn’t the humiliation enough?
One’s only purpose: denied,
or maybe just dragged out –
a Saturnine fate
for our little dream-seed,
sent to traverse
deserts of stones
full of snakes and shadows.
(We can’t all be purple-edged lushness
water-heavy cucumbers and
shamrock carpets of green
every day, every year.)
Sometimes,
we feed the birds.
Sometimes,
we keep rolling
with the winter winds
into caverns of deep sleep,
another decade about to burst,
waiting for a new spring
to come.