Dazed spring

Spring and All

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines—

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches—

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind—

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined—
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance—Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken

William Carlos Williams

I had turned to WCW to refresh my memory of “A Widow’s Lament in Springtime,” its perfectly calibrated expression of the soul’s instinctive resistance to spring’s invitation untarnished by its ubiquitous inclusion in 20th century American poetry anthologies.  Invariably I feel this way around the turning of winter into spring, and it’s grown more palpable with the loss of my best friend.  Rereading the poem I see that the widow lived “thirty five years” with her husband, a denomination of time much too close to the 34 years I knew Frank.  Going ahead with life when a dear one will not is almost too much.

But “Spring and All” also gets to the gritty reality of life returning and deserves attention, especially since each day when I walk along the road for some 250 yards to the charter school’s track to get a short walk in, I pass distressing amounts of trash intermingling the greening.  People speeding from one place to another, their stereos blasting, wolfing down fast food and drinking liquor from “minis” that they toss from their cars, their lives are considered as equally disposable by the elites who are governing us.  These people, my neighbors, don’t realize consciously that the elites feel this way, although their frenzied behavior seems to suggest that deep down they do know.  What they leave in their wake suggests a notion of joy that involves a desperation to consume as much and as quickly as possible and a lack of attentiveness that concerns me.

I, on the other hand, have been forcing myself to slow to almost imperceptible movements.   While it feels radically different from most people’s responses to the season’s increasing vibrancy, it’s my way of coaxing myself back into the world with as much awareness as I can bring to the risks and rewards of being alive and aware at this moment in history.  A lot of pieces are still in play, too much remains unresolved, and everyone’s attendance and attention is urgently required.  One needs time and space to accommodate not merely the hopefulness but also the sorrow that is intertwined.

I have a little framed piece of glass that I purchased when I was in California in the summer of 2020.  It’s designed to hold cards with quotations, and from the assortment at that particular store, I chose this one.

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.

Anatole France

Dying and being reborn are a tough act to do simultaneously but it is happening all the time, even as the sunlight infuses the blue sky.  Right now as I try to accommodate the rising energies of the natural world into my own rhythms, I’m also husbanding my energy for another momentous act – that of departure.

Over the next month, possessions will be forgotten, broken, purposefully discarded.  Plans will be revised, my patience will be strained, tears will fall, ugly exclamations uttered, the skin on my hands will chafe and all the fingernails will tear.  Routines will break down to be reconfigured slowly elsewhere.

The last glance I give this space that has afforded me with security and comfort will be in anxious haste as I rush to my next destination, cats already in their travel containers, my car key secured safely in my pocket, my aching body able only to drive away with a last look in the rear-view mirror.

This observation is one gleaned from the close-to-innumerable relocations I’ve accomplished in my more than five decades on this earth; another involves the strange qualities time possesses.  Upon learning that my next adventure would transpire in another state, my first reaction was to plot out what needed to be done in order to get everything accomplished.  Then I paused, recollecting how so many times I would rush around frantic — packing my possessions, rushing to appointments to secure another rental, redo the calculations on how much money would be needed — only to have my fate meet me calmly less than two weeks from the day I needed to be gone.

True, I’ve been extremely fortunate, even in the midst of calamities I couldn’t have planned for, to arrive at a new home that would shelter and comfort me, and from which I would, one day, leave for another.  One cannot count on fortune the same way one can total one’s financial assets.  But there is an understanding that seems to me true so far:  if you rise to meet your future, it will meet you when you most need it.  Having faith in this promise is like the faith the trees have in winter, knowing their leaves will return.

I will need countless miracles, but Nature reminds me they happen every day.  If I listen carefully, I may be able to hear them approach.