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Sunday, February 25, 2018

Thaw

This music—when the alder and maple drop
their icy lace handkerchiefs on the soft mud
beneath Sol's melting gaze—songs made of
streams and cast-off shells, over then under
frozen ledges layered and fractured as mica.

This music sings me into silence. No sound but
my slow inhale, exhale—I hold still, even when
a pebble, frost-heaving down an embankment,
splashes, startling me. It's Spring, the creek is
playing, tumbling, singing its thawing. So am I.

Saturday, February 03, 2018

Vernation

Amanda Slater, "Dicksonia antarctica,
Circinate vernation," 2014

The compost disassembling under fiddlehead
leaves, sighing out our collective breaths held
since last winter—stretching unfurling croziers
to shepherd us from chores to mysteries. Look
how the mist rises before sunup, washes out all
the color from the gifts I brought you: the lump
of sweet butter shaken from cream, jade horns
opening from a mat of pixie cup lichens, a loose
scrub-jay feather carrying the summer sky. Let's
set our old bones on fire, make ourselves a joy-
filled crucible for the bud-break post-vernation.