The shadbush outside my dorm in the mountains of Central Pennsylvania swelled and swelled with rain and spring until it was about to burst. Amelanchier spp. Serviceberry. Shadbush. Juneberry. Different names for different times of the year. The first opening of white buds letting early American settlers know the ground was thawed enough to bury and hold service for their winter dead, the opening of flowers to let them know that the shad were running the rivers, to the sweet dyed lips and tongues of summer juneberry jam.
Upon noticing 5 white scale-like petals circling the warm of a sun slowly creeping a river towards 50 degrees, I knew that it was time for me to go home.
Rebirth. That was the theme. A rebirth of my home river in shades of silver and lavender after a long cold winter. It was Easter weekend, when Christ took up the mantle of sin and died upon the cross before his own rebirth three days later, much to the astonishment of the two Mary's and those fishermen whom we now call the Disciples.
Silver and lavender. Silver linings behind April clouds. Silver tints to the shadbush, silvery shad and herring and stripers. Lavender in the air, in scales, in the smell of the anticipation of summer to come.
The herring lead the stripers, the stripers eat the herring, the herring that survive die. Before they die, they dance, they dance their ancient spawning dances across the Upper stretches of the river, release their new ancient eggs and eventually die along the banks of the Water Gap by the thousands, feeding the bears and raccoons and the earth, before the eggs experience a rebirth as more herring, each with a little petal of April tucked in their silver and lavender scales.
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