The first flowers begin at the bottom,
New shoots of forsythia,
almost out of sight unless you look close.

The promise of spring
lies always near the roots.

Small Adventures

The bridge is rickey, a floating bridge
over a woodland pond. Rarely traveled,
it floods in the spring,
making the passage if not dangerous,
at least a little messy, a place avoided by most.

There is no obvious view, no reason
to cross the bridge in the wet season.
Nothing draws you except curiosity.

For you, that is enough,
rarely content to wonder,
you have a desire to see,
no matter how messy,
where the journey takes you.

This tendency has not always served you well.
At times, there is nothing worth the journey
on the other side
and you are left wet and worn with nothing to show
but the adventure and stories to tell your children,
reminding them you too still have
some of the wildness of youth buried in your old bones.

You are a collector of mistakes,
some of them unavoidable, some of them not your own,
some of them spectacular.
Most barely noticed. Part of the journey,
to collect them like brim on a line,
then let them go at the end of the day.

You cross the shakey bridge. Your feet grow wet.
On the other side is a clearing of rocks and boulders.
You clamber up in the April sun
and take off your shoes and socks
and lie on the sun while they dry.
You will take a new path home, a dry one,
a safe, if somewhat longer one.

But this small adventure has been a success.
For all its mess, there is healing in the sun
that bakes you and the rocks you lie on,
and if the wet path was a mistake,
it is one you would gladly make again.

Sunlight comes through the window.
The wooden bowl casts a shadow,
beautiful, simple.

This morning, again, you are in no hurry.
Your life has slowed down and there is time
to see.

Life has become closer, more precious,
bound by walls and doors and masks
and an unfamiliar fear.

This is not who you are.
But it is, right now.
Something weaker than you want to admit,
far more vulnerable,
your breathing labored and wheezy,
unsure. Each moment, each breath
both work and a celebration.

You remember your father like this,
his smoke ravaged lungs straining each breath
for the last years of his life,
no medicine,
no mechanics able to do more than making the next possible.
I watched the wearing away,
of body and mind, and will.

This will pass. Already the medicines are at work.
Already your wheeze has died down to a whisper.
You will heal. Doors will open.
Horizons will return,
and you will walk them, staring into the dusky sky
unafraid of death,
thankful you have been spared for a time,
the gratitude itself a kind of horizon,
a way of seeing past your vulnerability,
finding again the horizons once lost,
and finally, reclaiming each and every one.

It is a strange kind of spring,
autumn leaves, the stragglers and survivors
that clung to the white-clad birches all winter,
have let loose, their yellow leaves a carpet
covering the April grass and its greening.

Typical of New England, there is no continuity of weather.
One day the sun warms your skin like a lover’s touch,
and next day is cold and snowy, cutting like betrayal.

It is a season of plague and quarantine,
a cruel joke, making us all prisoners of fear,
like birch leaves, hanging on, clinging
until the season changes.

I am not a worrier.
I was cured of worry, I believed, a decade and a half ago,
surviving more than I believed I could then,
nothing now seems as consequential.
but I worry now.

I worry for the children,
mine and the ones that surround me.
I worry for the doctors and nurses,
for the people who stock my stores at night,
for the myriad of people I know
who have built their livelihoods,
suddenly fragile, unexpected deaths to the plague.
I worry for the poor. I know too many of them
for them to be an abstraction. No care, no money,
what little life they have crumbles.
I worry about the loud ones, the deniers
and all they touch, proud carriers of disease.
What will become of them?
I worry for the elderly, huddled, too often
already victims of loneliness,
a new vulnerability suddenly added to the frailness of age.
I worry about…. the list is too long.
I pray, but the list is too long, too easy
to leave someone loved out,
until at last I cry out to God in a great groan
that says more than my words,
and I lean into him, knowing he knows,
more than I, the loss and fear and need
for comfort and strength beyond what I have.

I walk across the yellow leaves of spring.
Freshly stripped off the trees in yesterday’s rain,
they are supple and a thing of beauty.
But this will not last. In a few days they will dry
and turn brown, and fall to dust beneath my feet,
no longer survivors, but victims and all that is left to me
is prayer and the power to remember their beauty
and share it, long after they are gone

This is the view from where I sit.

Just to the right of me is the work table,
covered in brushes and paint
and half-finished paintings.
There are things that need to be framed,
and a plethora of pens.

There is no glamour to it.
A working space with good light
and more importantly, time,
set apart, for just this thing,
to get the rest of the world out of my way
and make room for the stuff that comes slowly,

the inspiration, the god-breath
that pulls things out of me no one knew
were there, much less me.

Some artist, me.
I spend far more time staring into space
than applying paint. Thinking you might call it
if you were generous and kind.
It is far less than that,
I am waiting with expectation,
trusting the universe will not leave me empty
for too long.

The boat is tied neatly against the pier.
The teak gleams but you can see the wear,
the marks of decades of use.

The things that make it able
have been maintained. You can see that.
The hull lacks barnacles. The ropes are fresh

and if the cleats show pits of oxidation,
they are small. Nothing has been allowed
to weather far. It is a craft ready,

made for travel, to ride wind and wave
using no more than its own strength
and the wisdom of its sailor

to trim the sails just so, always adjusting
to the fickle shifts of the ocean.
A survivor, never allowing neglect

to stand in the way of journey.
Even now, in this strange season,
docked too long to the wooden pier,

its whole purpose, whole meaning,
put on hold by fate and laws,
there is work to be done.

For the West wind always returns. Always.
There will be new horizons and the secret
to meeting the new necessities the West wind brings

is to do the work, not of maintenance,
but preparation.