Awake

Awake at 4 AM and I couldn’t get back to sleep. Thinking about mortality, which often plagues me when I’m sleepless in the middle of the night, and especially as we inch toward spring. I guess I’ve had a lot of losses in fair weather. Maybe I should convene a Spring Grievers group.

We had sunshine today, after yesterday’s rain. Deep blue sky and fluffy clouds. Our five crocuses are up, staggering across the little strip of lawn between the house and the driveway. I don’t know how they got there. Do voles rearrange the underground furniture?

The snowdrops are fully open now, looking like tiny white skirts in the afternoon sunshine. They won’t last much longer. Already the siberian squill are starting to poke up nearby. In a few weeks they’ll carpet the woods in blue.

That spring is a season of hope is a cliché, but like most clichés, it’s generally true. Perhaps the only surprise is that it becomes more true as one gets older. This spring seems to me both more encouraging and miraculous than last spring. Perhaps it’s because with each passing year I’m more aware of my mortality - and the astonishing fragility of life.

Snowdrops

Snowdrops have come up in clumps in the woods out back, poking up through the mat of last fall’s leaves. They’re hard to see at first. I have to stand still and look around. They most often appear near the bases of trees where I assume the soil is probably warmer. They’re unassuming little flowers, easy to miss. They’re well-named; except for their bright green stalks, they look like droplets of snow. I’m struck – not for the first time – by how much of what belongs in a woodland setting is camouflaged, initially invisible. This, in contrast to the visual noise of human environments, where so much is designed to compete for our attention in ostentatious display. It requires a shift in perspective to notice what’s going on when I'm out in the woods. A patient quieting of the mind, a willingness to embrace silence. A friendship with wonder.

Red-Winged Blackbird

The blackbird calls from down by Axtell’s Brook,
confirming advent of our long-awaited spring.
His melodic chrrr prompts me to look
for tell-tale crimson blaze along a wing
but all he shares with me is song.
I have heard that some count bird song less
tune than dominance. But they are wrong
for this arpeggio is surely poetry of yes.

Anticipation

March brings the first kiss of spring – in the increased light, in the warmer air, the thawing earth. The sun sets directly behind the house now instead of at a slant behind our neighbor’s. At the edge of the woods, the snowdrops have popped up through the matted leaves, and the patches of snow are almost gone. All that remains is a dirty pile at the end of the driveway – leftover thanks to the plow after our snowstorm two weeks ago.

It’s mud season. The back yard is spongy and wherever I take a step a slick mud print appears. The dog romps in winter’s detritus, pouncing on sticks and tossing them into the air, tracking the erratic flight of squirrels from tree to tree. Yesterday she surprised a gray squirrel in our garage and instantly morphed from my companion to a predator.

No one anticipates more eagerly than a dog on point. Every muscle quivers with attention; she lifts her paw. She waits.

Evidence

Yesterday’s mail brought Evidence, the new volume of Mary Oliver’s poetry. I read through it too quickly, as if I might mine the richest gems without the sweat of digging. But I will go back, and often. Oliver’s work never disappoints. She tunes me in to wonders too easy to forget: the goldfinch’s flash of color reflected in a puddle, the dogged faithfulness of a beating heart, the miracle of trees. She writes of grief and hope, of cheerfulness and dying. These poems, as all her work, are filled with animals. I plan to savor them one at a time, like prayers rising. And so here is another mystery – how can another person’s words speak so truly what is locked away in my own soul?

Turtle Questions

What does a turtle know of death
who buries herself in mud
all winter and does not eat
or move or take a breath
but lies with legs and head and tail
outstretched, to welcome cold?
What does she dream, ice-sealed
in six-month long exhale,
her heart slowed nearly still?
What thoughts disturb her
glacial tomb? What pale
needle of light directs her will
to rise and breathe and breed?
What resurrection talent prompts
her surfacing in June, resolute,
on cue, to lay her eggs and feed?
What fear has she of butcher’s knife
who gives herself to dark for
half the year, then swims toward light?
What does a turtle know of life?

Spring Snow

It snowed again last night – a wet, spring snow that stuck in clumps to the smallest twigs. Snow has painted long swaths up the northeast sides of the tree trunks. Each branch is outlined in white against this morning’s crisp blue sky. Gray squirrels have made tracks across the driveway. Spring birds are caroling now when a month ago all I heard were crows and chickadees.

Underneath the snow the ground is still soggy from last week’s thaw. This snow will be quick to melt and the snowdrops will appear on the back lawn.

A spring snow is whimsical and bright, a reminder that we’re leaving winter behind. Like joy, it amplifies the light.

The Subnivian Zone

All winter under the snow
meadow voles make love
and feast on maple bark.
In March snow packs
down to crystal,
letting in bubbles of light.
The voles sleep fitfully in
their small grass nests.
Beneath them wild flowers
begin the long climb
toward the surface
and their bright
proclamation of spring.

Staying Alive

Experts know that technique is less important than attitude when it comes to survival. People who are lost in the wilderness sometimes die not because they’re starving or dehydrated but simply because they give up. Laurence Gonzales, who has written extensively on the subject, states, “Being lost, then is not a location; it is a transformation. It is a failure of the mind. It can happen in the woods or it can happen in life.” The greatest challenge each lost person faces is coming to terms with how the world has changed. He or she must remap the world.

Currently I’m remapping my world after cancer. My first instinct, once the treatment was done, was to try to leave the cancer (and the fear) behind me. I tried to go back to normal, to return to the world as it was before.

I’m slowly discovering that there is no “normal.” I can’t “go back” to the same life because it isn’t there anymore. The landscape has changed. My task now is to really see the contours of my world as it is, to carefully remap it and to go about the business of living in it.

As Gonzales writes, “I could not change the world; I could only change myself. To see and know the world, then, was the key to surviving in it. I had to accept the world in which I found myself. I had to calm down and begin living.”

The Shape of Grace

Dorothy C. Bass, in a book titled Receiving the Day, reminds the reader that the ancient Hebrews saw darkness as the beginning of their day. The Sabbath begins at dusk and ends at dusk. Bass points out that this creates an important perspective on God’s time. During the first part of the day, God is at work while we sleep. We wake into the midst of God’s activity. We join it; we don’t initiate it. The day begins in grace.

I think it will take some time to begin thinking this way – to start seeing the ending of the day’s light (which has always made me sad) as the beginning of a new day. To see morning as my chance to plug into what’s already going on. To experience grace in this new shape.

Dazzled

Yesterday’s foot of snow is dazzling in this morning’s sunshine. Even when everyone else I know is tired of winter, the new ground cover rejuvenates me. Last week our back yard was soggy; in places my boots sank two inches into mud. Our dog bounds through the snow, pushing her nose into drifts and throwing up powder just for the fun of it. When I throw her ball it disappears instantly, but she’s very good at finding it.

Sifted Light

After some time
the years grow softer.
They sift down through my pleated skin
and sink to bone, accumulating there
as pollen collects in spring on a still pond.
So many hours given up to dreaming!
All those bright days gone, like stars
reflected in black water, fading.
I could have built a long stone fence
that climbed the hill out back and
ran around the summer orchard.
I could have made a deep porch swing
and set children there for laughter.
I could have formed a life of use,
at least possessing grace, instead of sitting
in the wind and rain, a gray rock thrown up
in a farmer’s broken field, watching
lichen crawl across my face,
waiting for something interesting to happen -
a change in weather, maybe,
or a new phase of the moon,
perhaps the falling of some final dark,
tender as snow.