Spring is a verb.
—Jack Mueller
Ache can verb
and curve can verb
and riot and burn
and break can verb.
We face. We care.
We scheme and swing.
We charm and fool
and do the dream.
We war. We praise.
We gun and raise.
We blur ourselves
into a busy haze.
Even hope can verb.
So does skin. And kiss.
We verbify
delight and wish.
But peace is a noun
that seldom swerves
into the class
of action verbs.
Peace just is—
an unchanging thing
that bids us not
do anything.
But who can resist
the spring?
Posts Tagged ‘spring’
Syntax Lesson
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged noun, peace, spring, syntax, verb on June 11, 2022| 6 Comments »
Almond Blossom
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bloom, blossom, ekphrasis, hope, Kayleen Asbo, spring, Van Gogh on May 28, 2022| 6 Comments »
inspired by Almond Blossom by Vincent van Gogh and music by Kayleen Asbo by the same name
I want to hang a painting
of almond blossoms
above your bed
so when you wake
the first thing you see
are delicate white petals
and a sky a thousand shades of blue.
I want you to wake every morning
into an ever-emerging sense of spring—
wake into sunshine,
wake to a world of splendor
and extravagant blossoming.
Of course, the fall.
Of course, the struggle.
Of course, the difficult days.
And of course, the almond blossoms,
painted in creams, pinks and greens
each one an insistent grace note
that lingers beyond its season,
promising something improbable
and utterly necessary,
like ever-blooming beauty,
like the light and airy perfume of hope.
Out of Season
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, grief, loss, spring on November 3, 2021| 6 Comments »
Autumn is, perhaps, befitting
for heartache—everywhere you look,
loss. Loss of leaves, loss of color,
loss of warmth, loss of light.
If you are grieving,
the barren world seems to mirror
what’s happening inside you.
Everything seems to say,
See, you can’t hold on.
So how to explain this explosion
of beauty, this unexpected spring of grace—
how to explain the way generosity
pushes through what’s dead
like apple trees in first pink,
how gratitude flourishes, enormous
invisible blooms, and though
you can’t see them, everywhere,
everywhere in this heart of autumn,
you smell the insistent green of springtide,
the astonishing perfume of love.
Again. Again.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cosmos, death, frost, garden, spring on May 25, 2021| 2 Comments »
Almost every spring, I forget them,
the six packs of cosmos starts on the porch.
All it takes is one cold night,
an innocence of frost.
By dawn, the buds slightly droop.
By noon, the leaves hang darkened and limp.
By the next day, they’re black.
And dead.
It’s a familiar story. How one night
changes everything. How one day
I’m blooming, thriving, alive,
the next all I’d grown is gone.
I used to believe all was lost.
I used to throw the whole plant away.
But I learned what is dead serves as a blanket
to protect whatever still lives.
Wait, and in days, a tiny green filigree
emerges from the base.
In a month or two, it’s a bask of blooms,
no trace of how bleak it was.
Such tender study, the cosmos.
Blame is no part of their process.
They let what’s been lost be of service.
They know they are here to grow.
I Don’t Know
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, not knowing, spring, surprise, words on May 3, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Today, I notice something green
spearing through the dirt
in the garden, and only
because there are eight such spears
rising in perfect rows do I vaguely remember
last year I planted bulbs there,
but I don’t remember what they are.
How much of the beauty we plant
do we forget?
There is so much in me that grows
because of words you have sown.
I doubt you remember them,
I don’t remember them, either,
only that your words were kind
and now they have taken root.
Who knows what the flowers
will look like? I water them, though,
trust I’ll be delighted when they bloom
into a garden of beautiful I don’t know.
This Difficult Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss, prayer, spring on March 22, 2021| 3 Comments »
Today the prayer is words
I can’t yet find,
words that flit away
like spring juncos, like chickadees.
Today the prayer I wish for
is not the prayer that finds me—
less like the perfume of a fully bloomed flower
more like the dank and fusty scent of spring.
Some days when I forget how to pray,
if I listen with my whole body,
the world reminds me how what is used up, spent
is also a vessel for the holy,
as dry leaves become a nest
as bare branches hold the sunrise.
One Lifetime
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, death, life, red wing blackbird, spring on March 18, 2021| Leave a Comment »
on the way to the graveyard
taking a few detours through spring—
trill of red wing blackbirds
Finding My Calling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged animals, busy, Jack Granath, nature, spring on March 10, 2021| 2 Comments »
with a line from “After the Japanese” by Jack Granath
A warm March day
and the blue sky
slips itself
into the list
of things to do,
and I would have to be
deaf or just plain stubborn
to not hear the call
to play outside—
and damn, but
I’m stubborn,
so the world
sends a bobcat,
a red-tailed hawk
and a whole herd of elk
to the yard.
What’s a busy woman
to do
but surrender?
I don’t.
Head down, I get
the work done.
I put on the blinders
of responsibility
until a poem says to me,
You do the right thing,
citizen, and my chest pounds
in urgent code:
that. means. you.
and I put down
the work and walk
into the day
to do my duty,
which is to meet the world
that will never
send an email,
the world
that will never knock,
will never call,
but will always
say welcome,
citizen, welcome.
Viola Tricolor
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blossoming, Corona Virus, death, flowers, medicine, showing up, spring, wildflowers on March 31, 2020| 2 Comments »
also known as Johnny jump up, heart’s ease, heart’s delight, come and cuddle me
Into the shade by the porch
bloomed the first wild pansy,
its small yellow face sunny
and eager and open.
The Athenians used to make
the tiny flowers into syrup
to moderate anger and
to comfort and strengthen the heart.
And here it is today,
small volunteer beauty,
growing in this patch of dirt
where nothing else wants to grow.
This tiny garden is but one of many
concurrent realities—others involve
hospitals short of beds, loved ones
gone, doctors scared to go home.
Our hearts need strengthening.
Little violet, we’re learning, too,
how to be surrounded by death
and still rise up, bring healing as we bloom.
Olfactory
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, february, friendship, healing, Kyra Kopestonksky, perfume, scent, spring on February 26, 2020| 1 Comment »
for Kyra
February ends with the fragrance of change—
not quite the fresh earthy scent of rain,
but no longer the white sterility of winter.
It’s the damp aroma of long dead grass
and the must of soil as it starts to unfreeze,
the bright tang of Gemini distilled from the sky
and the hint that someday there will be green.
This is the perfume I imagine you wearing today
as you move from the darkest hours of fear
into the chapter of healing. Yes, I smell it
as I hug you, the scent of making room for the world,
the scent of resilience, of beauty yet to come.
One Deep Purple
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged history, lilac, poem, poetry, scent, spring on June 2, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Springing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mud, poem, poetry, shine, spring on March 23, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I am reborn into the world of radiance—
crystalline icicles, glittering reaches of snow—
and whatever in me is old brown stick,
whatever in me is withered rose hip,
whatever is desiccated and dead takes notice
of the shine and says, Teach me that.
I am reborn into the world of drip
and melt and streets of mud,
and whatever part of me is muck-squeamish
and sludge resistant goes walking anyway
and wallows and squishes and slips and laughs.
In that slippery moment, the part of me
who has died becomes lotus.
And who is it in me that scoffs
and says Who are you to be lotus?
I show her diamonds in the field,
the big blue dome of sky, the vast
expanses of glistening mud,
and I ask her, Who are you not to be?
One Reality Check
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged independence, love, mud, poem, poetry, spring on March 18, 2019| Leave a Comment »
cleaning off my shoes
before walking through the mud,
and Love says to me,
what? do you think
I am going to carry you?
If You Hear a Rustle, Perhaps
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged angel, fall, grass, poem, poetry, rest, spring on November 10, 2018| 8 Comments »
Every blade of grass has an angel that bends over it and whispers, “Grow, grow.”
—The Talmud
Imagine them, all those angels
jostling over the field,
catching their hands
in each other’s halos,
their wings a shimmering
fuss. Imagine the rising tide
of the chorus, how
whisper turns clamor
turns turbulent roar.
Imagine the dizzying pitch
of encouragement, grow,
Grow, GROW, until bam!
a riotous tumult of green.
But what of the song
at the end of the season,
when angels, exhausted,
sigh rest, rest. And they press
their tired cheeks against
each other’s faces, let
their wings dangle
in lucent grace. And the field,
seeded, relaxes and goldens
and sleeps. And the angels
snuggle in sacred heaps and breathe,
and breathe, white robes
like snow, and they sleep talk
between their sonorous snores,
that’s enough, dear one, let go.
One More Storm that Didn’t Happen
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, snow, spring, winter on March 28, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Catkins in March
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aspen, choice, poem, poetry, spring, timshel, trees on March 17, 2018| 2 Comments »
But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—”Thou mayest”— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open.
—John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Today it was the aspen buds
that ruined my heart.
One glimpse of them
through the window, and
for that moment,
the inner winter I’d constructed
out of should and shalt
fell down like bricks. Perhaps I could have
returned to work, but instead
stared at the soft gray
tufts of spring. How they defy
the stubborn chill. And almost
against my will, in me I felt
an opening I didn’t quite want,
and perhaps I didn’t want to hear
a small voice saying, you
have a choice, you
have a choice.
After Winter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, present, seasons, spring on May 27, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Sometimes in spring
I forget it is ever
not spring, forget
that there will be a time
without hummingbirds
and the raucous call
of the geese. These lilacs
and their purple scent
are forever. Forever
is this deep green field.
I almost resent
the voice that writes this poem,
the part that notices how already
the apples have gone
from ecstatic white bloom
to small hard fruit.
One Humbling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 84, poem, poetry, spring, work on May 24, 2017| Leave a Comment »
in seven days
the radish sprouts
push green through earth—
every job on my list today
seems quite easy
RSVP
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling in love with the world, poem, poetry, spring on May 11, 2017| 2 Comments »
And why not be flagrantly happy,
really. The moon is full and rakish
and spring keeps teasing the morning
into taking off its sweater. By noon,
everyone is blushing. In the garden,
strawberries come up on their own,
their fearless white flowers
pre-wired for sweetness.
Who cares the weeds are already
releasing their onslaught of filigreed seeds.
Inside us, an open invitation to fall in love.
Inside us, the pluck to say yes.
One Spring Lesson
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, pussy willow, softness, spring on May 4, 2017| Leave a Comment »
arriving with no armor
with softness
they teach me
another way to meet the cold,
these pussy willows