Category: Spring 2024

When people look at my photos of you,
they say, in a kind of reverential tone,
“Reminds me of my grandma,”
and they get the sweetest smiles
on their faces, remembering.
I don’t know if anyone ever told you,
and I thought you might like to know.

It doesn’t matter that you grow in a tangle of weeds
or that you’re hidden in some corner where few ever pass.
You’re still exactly where you were destined to be,
where you were meant to unfurl your colors,
where you were needed to sing your song.

The sunbeams will still find you, the stars
will light your nights. Soft rains will come
to refresh you and to quench your thirst.
And when you least expect them, friends
will appear who see your beauty and strength.

Through your petals and leaves and stems,
life extends its blessings to the world.
So blossom and dance, dear child of the Yes,
and hear the wind whisper that you’re known
and seen, that you’re cherished and dearly loved.

The rains left behind a sea of ferns,
their green waves rolling in the breeze,
sparkled by celandine poppies
who pretend they are bits of sunny foam
atop a creating wave. I, who am still
recovering from winter’s drab days,
take this as a reward for my endurance,
the waves sloshing over my soul
with their green, healing joy.

All of a sudden the lilacs
are trumpeting their arrival.
Here. In the cool May rain.
When the sun reappears
they will open white petals,
and oh, the sweetness
they will give to the air!
Meanwhile, don’t you adore
their long, smooth throats? And how
their leaves glisten in the rain?

You would think that after decades
the world would cease to amaze,
to stop making that voice inside you
whisper, “Look!” But it doesn’t.
Every single year, it brings on spring.
Spring, with her whirl of changing moods,
tossing lightning bolts and wildflowers
and everywhere fresh green.
Last night it was thunder and buckets
of rain. Today, the newly mown path
that circles the wetlands is dry.
But spread on the floor of the woods
to the east, a sudden lake mirrors the sky.
and there it is again, that voice,
whispering “Look!”

The tulip had given its best.
It pushed itself through near-frozen soil
and withstood cold nights that took some
of its companions. It formed its bud slowly,
holding it closed until it was sure the threat
of freezing was gone. And then it opened,
full of splendor, its petals painted in a rainbow
of pinks, and corals and orange
For days it stood, offering its song to the garden,
to the sky, to all who chanced to pass by.
And when it finally spent itself and bowed
to the ground, the sky wept in pearly droplets
that bathed its dying petals in a wash of love,
in honor of all it had given,
for all that it had been.

Having completed their evening chorus,
the songbirds are still now, nestled
in their leafy shelters, dreaming
of flight. But from the upper woods
on the slope of the south hill, a turkey
calls, its sound linking in my mind
to the call of a loon that I heard
at sunset when I was ten
and spending a week at a camp
by a lake in a Michigan woods.
I remember the temperature
and fragrance of the evening air,
the sky’s colors, the cracking bonfire,
and how we all joined hands,
and facing the sun as it melted
into the lake, sang “Taps.”
As I gaze at the sunset’s lingering colors,
the turkey calls again, and I hear
a choir of children. “All is well,”
they sing. “Safely rest.
God is nigh, God is nigh.”

A curtain of rain had covered the hillside
for what seemed like endless days.
When, finally, it lifted, the world
was drenched in green and you
found yourself breathing emeralds
touched with honeysuckle perfume.

Over the decades of birthdays past
life has grown complex. You think,
when you are young, that you will reach
a point of dreams come true, maybe
by the old age of forty or so,
and coast to the end from there,
fulfilled and at ease.
Then reality happens, revealing a world
that’s nothing you had supposed
or wanted it to be. Life, you discover,
can be tough, it’s lessons hard, its pathways
often rocky. But, oh, the treasures
it bestows along the way! The rays of truth
and wisdom, the touches from loving hands,
the songs of Silent Teachers singing
through the seasons, smiles of strangers
and children, the stream of companions
and friends, and always, the infinite
sky, painting the unfathomable Yes
to remind you, despite any evidence
to the contrary, that you never truly
left home and have always been
known and dearly loved. And so, arriving
at this birthday present, my 78th, I celebrate
sunlight spilling through green branches
onto pink azalea blossoms and give thanks
for another day of waking
on this wondrous and challenging globe.

One day, years and years ago, on a day
much like this one, I walked along
a country road, much like this one.
It had been a long, hard winter.
I had passed the time assembling
picturesque, thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles.
Now, looking up at the scene before me
as I walked, I suddenly saw the world
transform into a giant jigsaw puzzle,
its pieces etched against the sky.
“What would happen,” I wondered,
“If I reached up and pulled a piece out?”
So I did. And then I knew.
What an amazing dream!