tentative spring, close to enthusiastic
three months have worked upon the mountains
since I last visited them,
so the transformation of tentative spring
feels like an artist just started to work,
the austere canvas of winter’s sketch
now intricately dabbed with budding color:
the purple extravagance of redbuds,
the white puffs of the “sarvis” on the slopes,
the reds and golds maple and oak start to remember,
the small pointed leaves of the dogwood
are almost to the size of squirrels’ ears,
so oldtimers would say we could plant corn soon,
rain has come through and sat upon the mountains,
the grass and yellow trillium look luxuriant,
and the creek is loud and white, though clear,
for above us,
root and leaf have been left well enough alone
so they hold the soil,
so they hold against the leveling toward the sea
water lives in its soul as it laughs in submission
to the call of the totality
the Earth holes in the universe,
I continue to want to learn
from the powers that were old
before people came to be,
I love our moral stories,
but I love first the elemental stories
of rock and water, of plant and animal,
before I get lost in what I see reflected from the water,
I want to see into it, to see before it, beyond it,
how can I be a master
until I finish my apprenticeship?
the next morning we foray up the valleys
where cove hardwood still remembers great trees
with trunks reaching toward the sky
and an interconnected web of community below our feet,
and, between those levels, the ephemerals of early spring
race to flower and seed while the way is open,
before the canopy above returns to capture the Sun,
we feel like we are visiting a preschool
with thousands of flower children laughing
and enjoying each other and each moment:
yellow and white trillium,
beds of May apple and squirrel corn and fringed phacelia,
foam flowers, miterwort, violets everywhere,
bloodroot just past flower, wild ginger just coming into flower,
all of them so like fairies,
as if just born,
and also ancient beyond our reckoning.
No comments:
Post a Comment