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April 22, 2005
Frog Run
A Prayer in Spring
Robert FrostOh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.
For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.
While work and other responsibilities (Orion foremost among them) have expanded beyond the limits of time, the seasonal dance that is spring in the North Country has begun in earnest:
Over the past week, the steady dripping of maple sap into buckets that accompanied our walks to school was replaced last week by a growing chorus of frogs from across the road.
This morning, a heavy frost covered an inchworm that drifted above the trail at head-height on its silken strand.
Snowdrops pressed their way through the still yellow mat of unkempt fescue, drowsy in the chill of morning.
From afar, the forest is clad in faint echoes of its autumnal hues (in "that other fall we name the fall").
Spring is composed of daily impressions; it is not one season, but a crescendo of countless intimate encounters. Orion has been able to join me on many of these forays into the forest, and he rarely slumbers while we saunter, his eyes darting from light to shadow, from tree to sky to field in a silent, specular cadastral survey. He, too, cannot help but greet the beauty of each morning with laughter.
Posted by pavel at 8:59 AM | Comments (3)
April 8, 2005
Faith in a Seed
Wednesday evening, while Orion was out on a walk with Jen and Pika (Orion, at not quite four months, was not doing much of the walking, of course), I went out with Pemi to the school farm across the road. In the stillness of sunset, I lay out on one of the boulders that had been too large to move with a team of horses or oxen and now stood as an island in a cascade of light, capturing from its vantage both sunrise and sunset each day. A light green tapestry of lichen did little to soften the hard granite cushion I used for my brief reverie. Pemi's excitement at being outside in the warm field roused me after only a short while, and we set off down toward the newly dug beds of the farm on our appointed task.
Across the small orchard where I had posted "Goodbye and Keep Cold" during a warm spell this winter, I added Frost's "Putting in the Seed":
You come to fetch me from my work to-night
When supper’s on the table, and we’ll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals fallen from the apple tree.
(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;)
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,
The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.
Walking by the moist, dark cakes of freshly dug soil and delicate green shoots burrowing upward toward the sun inside their cold-frames, I couldn't help but think of this poem, and of Thoreau's essay, "The Dispersion of Seeds." And although the farm's seedlings need a bit more help getting along than Thoreau's self-propagating pines, the faith -- almost a suspension of disbelief -- required to accept that a world of green will soon rise from a handful of hard, dry seeds sprinkled haphazardly in the slowly warming soil is considerable.
For me, it takes a similar faith that all that I do for my son in these early months will have some lasting effect on him as he grows. Already he has begun to show us a distinct character -- his often contagious ebullience making his father smile and laugh much more than he is used to, and his inquisitive wide eyes making everyone long for his sense of wonder. Will all the play, the warm moments in the rocking chair, the poems we read together (Tess Gallagher most recently) somehow blossom from what we think is careful nurturing? I can only have faith that the seeds we plant will sprout and reach heavenward, like seedlings that limn the contours of their parent, long-since decayed and itself part of the fertile, nurturing soil.
Posted by pavel at 9:43 AM | Comments (4)
April 5, 2005
Spring Snow
A Winter Morning Ted KooserA farmhouse window far back from the highway
speaks to the darkness in a small, sure voice.
Against the stillness
only a kettle’s whisper,
and against the starry cold
one small blue ring of flame.
Orion and I drift to and fro in our rocker, our breathing a somnolent metronome to this moment of morning stillness. My eyes slowly open as Orion stirs in my arms, and I can't help but smile at our small, perfect world inside -- for now, nothing to wait for, nowhere to hurry to.
Outside, earlier, the pre-dawn grey was all sugar and snow, confected by last night's storm. The spring declares itself here despite the persistent ice and cold; the smell of boiling sap and wood smoke lingers heavy and sweet in the cold air, birdsong is slowly edging into our woods, a few tentative moths alight at dusk, and this morning, threads of spider's silk hung low, weighted with garlands of snowflakes. Signs of spring are subtle and precious; the university where I teach, some 40 minutes south, devotes a webpage each year to cataloging spring blooms on campus. Yesterday was their inaugural entry for this year: snowdrops (snowdrops!).
Although the season seems slow to change (according to many, the maple sugar harvest is late and somewhat below average in our area this year), the small changes of each day bring details of beauty, even in the midst of winter's brief return.
a shell patiently waits for the warmth of spring to arrive at the beach
Posted by pavel at 11:00 AM | Comments (3)
April 3, 2005
The Outermost House
A Spring Morning
Meng Hao-janI awake light-hearted this morning of spring.
Everywhere around me the singing of birds --
But I remember the night, the storm,
And I wonder how many blossoms were broken.
After two weeks of travels, and an extended retreat from the digital world, we are finally all back together under our own roof. As I search for last night's missing hour in a mug of green tea, Orion stirs beside his mother and Pika pads slowly across the kitchen linoleum, stopping to stretch before nosing at me for a scratch. Things are again as they should be.
Our week off the southern New England coast was a kind of spiritual appassimento, a drying out of the soul from the drenching late winter of our more northern climate, a drying which is only one step in the gentle process of distilling a delectation of spirit. Our welcome retreat was without plan or reflection, more the moment of a haiku than the procession of verses that is our everyday routine.
To go south for the vernal equinox is to embrace the northward march of spring head on. But our southward shift was as much about meeting the spring as it was about reconnecting with one another in a warm(er), springtime slant of light.
Morning
The leaves of the predominant oaks -- a mix of white, black, post, and scrub -- are still months away from unfurling, so the low canopy of grey branches only lightly filters the spectrum of blue above -- coloring the tangle of huckleberry bushes beneath with the radiant warmth of a new season.
Afternoon
Orion is snug against my chest, looking out at a world he has never seen; perhaps his view lacks detail, but the expanse of mottled green waves, the sound of pebbles tumbling along the sand, and the salt spray of early spring meet his senses as they do mine, and we trace the line of the horizon together.
Evening
Calls rippling across a watercolor sky,
Two geese low over the pines in fading light,
The world starting us with its sudden closeness.
Posted by pavel at 11:25 AM | Comments (3)