spring – The Kingdom of Enough

Sit With All Your Senses Alert

Thank you to my friend Kim Woodland for this guest post. I met Kim in Carolyn Flynn’s writing group and have had the pleasure of hearing her work for many years now. A naturalist and retired teacher, Kim shared the experience of outdoor education with kids from preschool to high school, and now I’m delighted to share with you a view of my garden through her poetic eye.

My Friend’s Backyard

the sun

bathes my skin in warmth

like the steam curling up

as I sip my morning chai

on this cool spring day

winter rains have resurrected

last autumn’s chard,

dark green leaves flutter

on four feet of ruby red stems

individual asparagus

stand like sentries

in the oblong wooden rimmed

garden bed

some tipping their heads

like snakes ready to strike

the oak titmouse,

a small gray bird

with a fancy crest,

flies proudly from tree to tree,

a chickadee visits the suet feeder,

turning like an acrobat

to find the choicest bites,

a golden crowned sparrow

flits nervously in a bush

waiting for its turn

while the Bewick’s wren

trills a daring song

and waggles its stiff,

upturned tail feathers

I sit with all my senses alert

as I observe the neon yellow

petals of the oxalis

reflecting the sun’s color

back to the giant star

the smell of jasmine

arrives on a warm breeze,

my feet are solid on earth

as I sit in my friend’s garden

breathing it all in

each atom

vibrating its own story

connects me

to my place

within the infinite

and the microscopic

as they swirl and twirl

into one.

By Kim Woodland

At the Edge of Spring

All fall and then all winter

I meant to prune

the spent asparagus ferns.

Now, hidden beneath the dry stalks

and lush encroaching oxalis,

Tom and I discover fat spears

pushing up from the earth.

A white tulip peeps from under the hopseed,

and jasmine shares the first fruits

of its fragrance with the bees and me.

Workdays that began and ended

in the dark two months ago

are now bookended by light,

and the slate blues of my winter doldrums

are yielding to pastel hues.

Within me optimism stirs

like a chick inside an egg

who hears her mother’s chirps and coos.

This school year,

my last as a college librarian,

is exactly half over,

and I feel change coming

like the light

slowly swelling the days.

What used to weigh heavy

is starting to slip away.

Already I delete incoming emails

that no longer apply to me.

Soon I will shred papers,

give away office curios,

and on the last day

surrender the keys

that have been for twenty-one years

in my safekeeping.

For now, though, I am waiting

as I started to wait

when I planted bulbs last fall.

What colors will bloom?

Which flowers will flourish?

With gratitude to Lea Haratani for the title

All Things Sing You

Human ears hear

the chittering of squirrels

and the here I am coos

of the mated mourning doves,

the breeze playing

in redwood boughs,

bamboo fronds,

and ponderous birds of paradise,

each tree as distinct

in the fingers of the wind

as instruments in an orchestra.

But could I ever learn to hear

the spit spat spurt

of asparagus cells eating sunlight

or slow my vision to catch

those green spears soaring to the sky?

Ordain my senses

that I may eavesdrop

on the love song

of the vine to the rosebuds

and the petals’ pleasure-soaked sighs

as they unfurl their delicate curves.

May I too sing You

ten thousand ways

in the ebb and flow

of silence.

Title from Rilke’s Book of Hours, 1,45

On the Eve of Spring in a Time of Plague

It’s true, the hush that has fallen over the world is wrought of disease and splintered by anguish, but with no competition from cars, the neighborhood birds take extravagant delight in their morning song, and the oxalis says thank you to the sun and late winter rain with a carpet of yellow blossoms.

Already vowed through their roots to this particular plot of earth, the roses and the redwood continue to shelter in place with equanimity, while the squirrels show flagrant disregard for the order of the public health officer, racing along their private highline. Of this I am privileged to know a small segment – the piece that runs along our roof, five feet through the air to the tips of the privet, through its leafy thicket, and onto a limb of the redwood, possibly with a quick game of chase around its trunk, before disappearing into the neighbor’s backyard.

Our neighborhood acrobat

Each day the persimmon tree takes another step in her dance with the seasons. The crone who presided through the winter now wreathes her bare limbs with maiden leaves and drinks her fill of sunlight and the mycorrhizal ambrosia twined round her roots, already dreaming of the bees she will seduce – but not yet of the luscious fruit she will birth. Those golden orbs, a feast for humans, squirrels, and crows, are seasons away in an uncertain future.

In this time of plague we knit our hearts to the sorrow and fear that now unite us, but let us join too with the humble psalm of the oxalis. Thank you for the rain, the sun, this greening. Thank you.

The Womb of Winter

Snowy scene — Photo courtesy of Quin Johnson

Hidden in the earth

a seed waits, drinking darkness.

Conceived on a summer day

when the sun suckled the earth,

fruit of wanton flowers frolicking

with passionate, hungry bees,

a seed in the womb of winter

might feel lost and forgotten.

But no,

the earth is not a grave;

it is your swaddling clothes.

Trust in the darkness,

trust in your quiescent potential

that holds all in its nothingness.

Spring will come,

and the light of lengthening days

will coax the glory of God

from the seedpod

and beckon you to itself.

The Channel

Hidden in the hills,

a spring spills its secrets –

milk and honey from the womb of the earth.

Seeking its course through forest and vale,

water calls the banks of the river into being –

Find me!

Listen,

within you plays the song of the stream.

You are the banks of the river

and its bed

that give the water a place to go.

Unbraid your hair now, and

let the oncoming tide dissolve

your holding back.

Where the moon marries salt to sweet,

may your gathering waters

flow out to the sea.

Vernal Equinox

Before work I sit beside a pond

where frogs sleep and dragonflies play.

Winter is tipping into spring,

and already French lavender sends out faint tendrils of scent;

purple blossoms flutter up rosemary branches.

This is what we’ve been waiting for,

my hibernating muse and I.

Sun just peeking over a roof touches my forehead

and dapples the rust-red algae

covering the little pond like a velvet coat.

The monarchs are departing, winging their gentle way northward.

Now the sun kisses the page of my notebook,

and daffodils praise the morning light.