Signs of Spring

The light

emerging

Everything

begins again

or so

it seems.

Out of Dormancy

Sometimes all it takes
is an orange
opened on a plate
on the sill in the sun.
Or the failing cat
alive again come
morning. Or the dazzle
of sunlight silver
on branches one might
take for dead but not
at all and the sun's quick cameo after
wall upon wall of storm daring
try just try to catch me and I do
and am surprised, surprised.
Or pussy willow long forgotten
glinting fresh and new. Witch
hazel sure can do it too
silly and spiced and reaching
for the half moon in a sky so
blue blue blue. Sometimes
the littlest nudge will do
to bring perpetual
me back unstoppable
to irrepressible
Love.
To love
to Love.

Valentine

Today I am sending out much love, infinite gratitude and deep appreciation to W. S. Merwin, definitive poet and certainly no stranger to Love. I offer these luminous lines of his as a
Valentine to you all,
in celebration of Love.



Today it was just a dry leaf that told me
I should live for love.
It wasn't the six birds sitting like little angels
in the white birch tree,
or the knife I use to carve my pear with.
It was a leaf, that had read Tolstoy, and Krishnamurti,
that had loved William James,
and put sweet Jesus under him where he could be safe forever.
"The world is so bright." he said. "You should see the light."
"The branch is necessary, but it is in the way."
"I am not afraid. I am never afraid."
Then he stretched his imaginary body
this way and that.
He weighs a half a gram, is brown and green,
with two large mold spots on one side, and a stem
that curls away, as if with a little pride,
and he could be easily swept up and forgotten,
but oh he taught me love for two good hours,
and helped me with starvation, and dread, and dancing.
As far as I'm concerned his grave is here
beside me,
next to the telephone and the cupful of yellow pencils,
under the window, in the rich and lovely presence
of Franz Joseph Haydn and Domenico Scarlatti and Gustav Mahler
forever.

~W. S. Merwin

Excerpt from a Love Story II

This life is a light meant for burning.

I love: isn’t that enough? Isn’t it everything, really?

You ask me to choose you forever. I know nothing about forever. I only know there was a bird in my hand that flew, citrus bursting on my tongue, blood orange and pink in a ribbon across the pond before dark, and then quiet. Does that mean something, dear? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Either way, this life is a light meant for burning. So I burn. And burn.

Excerpt from a Love Story

In sleep, I live a never-was. You hit the ground laughing and at first I am hands on hips, pouting lips, then I fall onto you, nuzzling hands nuzzling hands. And the carpet deepens green, grows leafy and I roll you onto soft needles and you roll me out of them--a battle of wills, yes, but not scarifying. And we rise smelling like a cat's coat and we are this musk and I pick thistle from your sweater, you straw weed from mine, and we turn for home, where we are: home, soaking lentils for soup, rounding up dogs from an evening walk, table cotton spread with stoneware and silver and the napkins too, smooth, the gauze curtains blowing into us. It's your same teeth in your mouth but not: they're brighter somehow. "Lucky to have a moon," you say--like snow over our fields of corn and beans and butternut. I'm making tomorrow's lists and there is no blood, just the background drumbeat of a pulse which is our knowing, the back roads, to avoid traffic, to make time...