April Poem # 3

"Life is storm, let storm"
[Melville, "John Marr"]

Nothing is permanent.
Not weather, nor fear.
But when normal shifts,
a degree here,
an inch there,
it does seem likely
that the center
won't hold.

Let the rain rinse
what the wind didn't steal.

Theme in Green

1.

In the green time, everything
not too tied to itself changes
in the way that means “survival.”

Like becoming awake again after a long,
anxious, dreamless sleep, an unremembered
swim in some elemental depth whose warmth
became almost too much to take, though the
unfamiliar outside is still so cold & unrelenting.

Until it finally gives in to the spin & tussle as light breaks.


2.

This year’s newest green is ruddy cheeked
& happy, mostly, like fresh from the pub,
tired but content, once his temper is satisfied.

He exists in that space beyond happiness,
beyond the ability to smile, laugh, or sigh.
Complete hopefulness, another boy born from
March’s stubborn belief that change is imminent
& brings a string of chances for replenishment.

So much is learned so quickly in a world of wind & weather.


3.

Everything conceived must grow by waiting.
What is accomplished in the seasons between is
impossible to understand once expectation turns to reality.

Nothing breaks harder than a season of ice.
But the green fuse that hopes & hopes, the push
of the newest needful thing: these are the markers
of ongoing life. Like Thoreau’s pines remembering
the sound of breeze, a boy opens his eyes in the sun.

This is what it means to be born into a world already so old.

Hope: "Il faut cultiver leur jardin"

Mid-Spring, the lilacs are bred, the rains come, the garden planned or planted. Summer is quick in the mind, the heart fluttering or hiding, preparing for the heat & humidity of Summer's inevitable drought & sudden storms.

But this is still Spring; weather is unpredictable and intermittently beautiful & unforgiving, as a Friday's flag, at half staff, semiotically suggested, making a whiplash turn from soft west to hard south.

That means the home stretch was mostly in head wind.

At the far end of the familiar farm pond, the elusive, saintly heron sat, again, watching my car slow to a stop on the gravel of a siding, but she didn't wait through my mad dash across the almost empty highway. Sensing the threat of being captured and over-pixelated, she flew--west & far & out of sight.

But the real gift was back on the other side of the car: neat, new green rows showing Summer's early work has already begun.

Beyond the beauty of the view, and that beauty was significant to bring me some measure of happiness not only for the weekend, one that would celebrate mothers and children, but to remind me that the hopefulness of Spring is always linked to the hard work of Summer.

Hope & happiness are never far from one another. But what we forget is the labor that it takes to keep the landscape free from obstruction and unavoidable ugliness. This was the lesson that these new rows taught me that a low-flying great blue bird did not.

There is a limit to vision, but still we squint our eyes and look. Hope takes work; it’s time to get our hands dirty.