Hope, by Don Tassone

He trudged through the soggy grass, sat down on the old cedar bench and stared at her flower garden, feeling as empty as it looked.
 
It had been a hard winter, the first he had ever spent alone.  Her passing had left him despondent, and he wondered if his life, too, was over.
 
She had always cleaned up her garden in the fall.  But now the wilted remains of dead flowers shrouded the untilled soil.
 
Then, near the edge of the barren, mottled earth, he spotted the green tip of the first crocus sprout, and his spirits began to rise.