🌿 Subject Line:

Between Portents and Petals

💌 Opening Reflection

Dear Reader,

March is a month of murmurings—
of shadows cast long, then slowly retreating.
It holds omens and offerings.

The Ides arrive with whisper-warnings:
to examine what we trust,
to question the weight of legacy and leadership.

St. Patrick’s Day carries the pulse of ancestors—
their exile, return, and spirit that never left the land.

And the Spring Equinox? It teaches balance.
The day of sameness, day and night
Crossing the line, of science—
Common sense, letting go
—Equinox

This is the turning in the green—
not the full arrival of spring,
but the moment we choose to lean toward it.

Not so long ago, the days grew short
When winter's night descended into dark
Emptiness filled the days with ache
Now the sun wakes the dormant park.
— Promise of Spring

May you listen to what your roots remember,
and what your branches now reach for.

📖 Featured Verse: Self Care

From Poems of Quiet Renewal

“Return”
I did not arrive
by conquering the cold.
I softened into it—
until something inside me
thawed first.

I let myself come back
not triumphant,
but tender—
not fixed,
but open
to blooming again.

📚 Rooted Reading: The Genealogy of a Chapbook

At 1:15 a.m., something deep-rooted woke me.
A whisper from the undergrowth of memory—
not loud, not urgent, from a dream,
persistent, like roots pressing quietly through earth.

I followed the nudge, not knowing why.
What I uncovered wasn’t new work—
but five poems written more than a decade ago.
Unrelated, or so I thought.
Each one bore the mark of shadow—
a quiet wrestling with darkness,
the Dark Universe, I began to call it.

Curious, I searched backward—
file by file, moment by moment—
like tracing a family tree
to find the ancestors of emotion.

More poems surfaced.
Some abandoned, others aching.
Together, they formed a clear descent.
A root system, reaching down.

But roots do not only descend.

In time, another branch revealed itself—
poems of the Ascent.
Of reclaiming the voice,
of finding warmth in the chest again.

This wasn’t a random grouping—
this was a chapbook waiting to bloom.
A genealogy of feeling.
A lineage of return.

And just like that—by 8:30 a.m.—
what had taken months to force
elsewhere came together with ease.
Not by effort,
but by listening.

We revisit the graves of old words,
and sometimes
they bloom again.

“Even a bloom that doesn’t come
changes the plant.”
— from Leaning Toward Light: Essence of Spring

✍️ A Gentle Prompt

What do you need to ask for—without words?
Write a poem or reflection that begins:

“The green returned to me when…”

Let it be an invitation, an echo, or a whisper from within.

🌸 Quiet Gift

You can still receive the free chapbook
Wisdom of the Quiet Muse,
a small collection meant for soft restarts and slow beginnings.

📥 Download here

🌙 Until Next Time

In stillness,
Herb
Poet of From the Quiet Verse