In this spring season it is rare to see upon the budding ground snow, what winter forgot to give and just now thought to bring. Bended branches, unbroken, slowly lose the weight of snow. They rise, shake themselves off, wonder about all the fuss. Broken branches litter the yard, lie in the street, crumble in the drive. They have done their giving part - birthed sweet leaves of green. In any season we may be broken by the coming of unexpected snow. Yet we have given birth to sweetness that in all seasons never dies. ____________________________________________________________ Portland, Oregon - April 11, 2022 Written following the first recorded snowfall in April, in Portland. It also seems fitting for this Holy Week when some consider the meaning of death and resurrection.
Spring
Springness
The cool night air of spring has forgotten what winter wrought when its breath blew over the land. Here, young leaves curl into the day as each morning when light comes from over the shoulder of the east some warmth I do not feel is kindled. The damp earth knows what I do not within root tendril and mineral maze where go all the wormy wanderers coiled creatures, slow slithering beings who, no less than I, live within the shelter of our one home. This I vow not to forget, ever. What is not holy on the land in the dark caverns below or flying in winds above? Nothing at all can I imagine! So let spring warm our northern lives while leaves fall on southern climes. Oh! The rapturous whirl of being! _________________________________________________________ Portland, Oregon - March 30, 2022
Viral Morning
Morning rises in day speckles
multifaceted green hue and blend.
Trees tall of evergreen break
the blue sky into silhouettes –
pointy pine needle etchings
carved into patches of bright sky
still cold from the chill night.
All in a spring morning –
bird call, little girl scream
delighted bike riding fast
leaving parents behind on the road.
Verdant vegetative bursting, virus
spreading, water seeping down
to seas and shadowy depths.
Morning and the green filtered
sky cannot hold the silence –
waiting and fear falling as rain.
I hold these in my own green life
through this lovely and cold
viral spring morning.
Portland, Oregon – May 6, 2020
We Bloom
In cold springtime
we poke up sun reaching
drink frosty rain
bloom with flowers.
Other live things bloom
grow across the world
become part of vibrant life
cause sickness and death.
Little different we
from viral living beings.
We infect the world
cause sickness and death.
Before me the horizon blooms
with life never imagined.
Oh, to bask in the light
before sickness and death.
Portland, Oregon – March 24, 2020
The worldwide pandemic (Coronavirus, Covid 19) is currently ravishing the world.
Silent Spring
This will end. We will be.
Closing doors, still spaces, spring
streets abloom with children.
The world is slowing silent
into layers of contemplation,
stillnesses of reflection
we had lost, unexperienced
in our futile failed flail
against the scourges of history
read as “Black Plague”
as wars others fought in and died.
It is our plague now, our war.
We do not know who will live
or die but all will suffer –
this, our common grief.
What will be if we pass this time
without insight, humility, or will
to make of closing doors
entrances to a transformed world?
Portland, Oregon – March 19, 2020. Vernal equinox.
April
There go the daffodils drooping
as tulips open over wilting leaves.
An afternoon sky, chill and cheerless,
drops in a cold drizzle dripping
freely given glistening pearls.
The world works in wetness
needing neither my attention or care.
My fleeting form in its fields fades
into the evening’s twilight,
dissolves into the ocean’s night.
Seek shelter where you may.
Nap, dream, wake to a window full
of world spin, star revolve, sun set.
Stay out of the way, lie low, listen.
What will come is coming whether
I wish to hurry it ploddingly along
or stand in its bewildering way.
My wandering through the dripping garden
or along my mind’s fog-laden pathways
will not deter the wet world,
catch its fall, change its course.
What may be is that, blind fool,
I may fall, caught slip-sliding away
if care is not the watchword of my day.
Portland, Oregon – Eve of a birth day, April 16, 2019
Deciduous Lives
When in spring green leaves grow
under the sweet canopy of a swelling sky
so grow our spirits within us, larger and lovelier,
expanding into the radiant fissures of life
bursting their seams revealing a broad firmament
to touch with fingers of life the hand of infinity.
Summer comes, its lush garment wraps about our lives
and we play with an ancient and unmerited inheritance –
gifts of intellect and desire, urgent love and sorrowful loss.
Our branches and leaves broaden, tangle, and cross
knitted through with warm air flowing through senses unfolding –
flower sweet, bird note, blue sky, rough bark, bitter cherry –
the sensuous warp and weft of the seamless garment of life.
It does not last, the canopy of spring, the garment of summer.
It falls down around us in russet patches torn and worn.
We look then to see our bare arms waving leafless
naked against the cold reach of approaching death
yet it is not death after all but sleep and dream
under the blanket of winter, its wind and rain and snow.
Portland, Oregon – December 11, 2018
Photo is my own of our front yard maple.
Coming Spring
For each one now spring
is not what once spring was
when its season meant not a thing
during the bloom and bud of youth
but the coming of a time for leaving
what we knew but did not well love.
Here now, many years now,
I think back to late winter days
before spring sprung through the gloom
and made me swoon with smells
delicious of wet cedar and beach
wafting through the mists of March
clinging still to memories of my home town.
The innocence of then –
when I spent my days ignorant,
too often alone, scared, angry
waiting for life to begin –
becomes the incense of age
curling slow and sweet into the rafters.
The coming spring will not be
what spring was when I was young.
It will be spring, just spring
curling up again from the ground
in shades of green and flowers
softening in layered strands
of long daylight hours perfumed
in scents of lavender, lilac, and lily
longing but for the sweet scent of sun
and the warm breath of the earth.
Portland, Oregon – March 15, 2018
The Requirement of Spring
Ash Wednesday it opened, the first daffodil
under gray skies, near the rock pile, just the one
blowing about on its pale green thin stem
come brightly unfolding in winters chill.
Now a cold wind pesters about from all directions
bringing dark clouds filled with hail bits, blasts of rain,
threats of snow in the night and in the early morn.
Still it is winter and still just the one daffodil.
Spring comes, I know, all else says it’s so, but spring
leaves us wanting it bright and quick to come
hurry to usurp this winters persistent and dark rumble
wearing at our willingness to wait, so weary.
Come, spring! Why need you an equinoxian turn
when other seasons linger long or too early arrive?
Come, spring! Bring on your abundant breaking
through the doors of winter as has this daffodil done.
Portland, Oregon – March 5, 2017
Photos are my own, taken March 5, 2017
Spring Garden
Deception in spring’s beauty
lovely garment of green, yellow, blue
that does not tell
speaks not nor whispers of autumn
will not say from what cold and darkness it came
forgotten winter altogether.
Fools believe in beauty lasting
rising green through damp and dark earth
on which to count life’s days
towards eternal spring.
Fools cavort in flowered fields
dance in coronal suns shine
traipse in petals, seeds,
dead and dark autumn fallen leaves;
twirl in imprudent delight
as imps and fairies
in forgotten worlds
timeless whorls
endless whirls.
Portland, Oregon – April 11, 2016
Photo is my own, taken this date.
In Cascadia 