The Holy Blissful Martyr for to Seek that Them Hath Holpen when that They Were Sick

I saw the spring yesterday, April 23^rd, 2012, in the buds and blossoms and new leaves on the sides of the hills in the Cumberland Gap area of Tennessee. The place has a human and geographic history that could occupy us forever but all that was as nothing yesterday compared to this magnificent, powerful, indescribable efflorescence of spring.

Chaucer's prologue to his The Canterbury Tales always comes to my mind in springtime, particularly the idea of folk longing to go on pilgrimages to the source of our well-being.

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eke with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye —
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were sike.

But all I really have to do to see and to feel that, to know of it immediately and for certain at any moment, is just to remember certain loved ones I once knew, who encompass it all.

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