Spring Beauties
Oh all you small and quiet beauties
I say: it is better to bloom
in the cool delicacy of spring,
when the earth's skin
is her finest garment
and her modest jewels
are not yet over-topped
by the elbowing crescendo
of summer.
In this crisp
and hopeful season,
you have only just
to clear the ground
to be
dazzling.
Dwellers in the Ruins
I.
We are dwellers in the ruins
of former worlds –
amidst the roots
of ancient mountains,
and the mossy, tumble-down boulders
plucked from once-towering
peaks –
along sinuous spines
of ghosted rivers
that tunneled beneath the miles of ice,
and everywhere: the puzzled, stony tracings
of absent farms
whose crop –
the evidence suggests –
must have been
rock.
II.
Do you speak
the language of stones?
It is
the earth’s
native tongue:
her first song
as she pitched
out of the blackness of space;
her voice,
which clattered
long before the first
green lung ever sang
out of the sea-salt.
It is the language
of earth’s epic –
with more of
cataclysm,
transformation,
and rebirth
than all the tales
of man.
III.
Would you believe me
if I said
You and I
were present
at the dawn of creation?
The poet Rumi said:
Don’t go back to sleep.
Today,
This solid, implacable
mountain is
by some earth-slip
some rain-wash
some root-wrangle
different
than it was
yesterday.
These precious,
dew-soaked leaves
glow with sunlight
that has never before reached this earth;
at this very moment,
they are building themselves
out of
Now.
Don’t go back to sleep -
for today,
and every day
Life
begins
again.
The Blossoming
Let me tell you what happened:
I got stuck
in the blossoming.
You see, I wanted only and always to be light:
breeze-bobbing and delightful.
I wanted to offer up my heart;
throw open the soft chamber of the petals, always laughing;
to balance on my soft stem like a question,
reaching
ever up.
Then came one of those
everyday winters.
When it was time to bow down –
to brown and curl –
I would not go.
What was down there
but the faceless nets of the fungus?
The jaws of the grubs?
The plundering ants?
And who, I wondered, ever stops
to admire a brown and rent leaf
as it melts into the ground?
I tell you –
now, I do.
I will tell you also:
there is no colder winter than one spent
yearning for flowers.
I lost more than one season
in argument against the patient,
waiting rootedness –
the hiding below ground,
talking with death and bacteria.
And dreaming.
And biding.
And later I would miss even bright days in scorning the leaves,
who live not to sing
but only to gather
and gather.
But what do you know
of flowers that never fade?
I imagine they are not as innocent
or soft
as they seem.
I had heard it said but did not yet believe
that the soil is the flowers
and the roots are the flowers
and the ice is the flowers
and the fungus is the flowers
and the stems, and the leaves, and the sun, and even
the death.
Now
I wonder if the world
is one,
long
blossoming.
Oh all you small and quiet beauties
I say: it is better to bloom
in the cool delicacy of spring,
when the earth's skin
is her finest garment
and her modest jewels
are not yet over-topped
by the elbowing crescendo
of summer.
In this crisp
and hopeful season,
you have only just
to clear the ground
to be
dazzling.
Dwellers in the Ruins
I.
We are dwellers in the ruins
of former worlds –
amidst the roots
of ancient mountains,
and the mossy, tumble-down boulders
plucked from once-towering
peaks –
along sinuous spines
of ghosted rivers
that tunneled beneath the miles of ice,
and everywhere: the puzzled, stony tracings
of absent farms
whose crop –
the evidence suggests –
must have been
rock.
II.
Do you speak
the language of stones?
It is
the earth’s
native tongue:
her first song
as she pitched
out of the blackness of space;
her voice,
which clattered
long before the first
green lung ever sang
out of the sea-salt.
It is the language
of earth’s epic –
with more of
cataclysm,
transformation,
and rebirth
than all the tales
of man.
III.
Would you believe me
if I said
You and I
were present
at the dawn of creation?
The poet Rumi said:
Don’t go back to sleep.
Today,
This solid, implacable
mountain is
by some earth-slip
some rain-wash
some root-wrangle
different
than it was
yesterday.
These precious,
dew-soaked leaves
glow with sunlight
that has never before reached this earth;
at this very moment,
they are building themselves
out of
Now.
Don’t go back to sleep -
for today,
and every day
Life
begins
again.
The Blossoming
Let me tell you what happened:
I got stuck
in the blossoming.
You see, I wanted only and always to be light:
breeze-bobbing and delightful.
I wanted to offer up my heart;
throw open the soft chamber of the petals, always laughing;
to balance on my soft stem like a question,
reaching
ever up.
Then came one of those
everyday winters.
When it was time to bow down –
to brown and curl –
I would not go.
What was down there
but the faceless nets of the fungus?
The jaws of the grubs?
The plundering ants?
And who, I wondered, ever stops
to admire a brown and rent leaf
as it melts into the ground?
I tell you –
now, I do.
I will tell you also:
there is no colder winter than one spent
yearning for flowers.
I lost more than one season
in argument against the patient,
waiting rootedness –
the hiding below ground,
talking with death and bacteria.
And dreaming.
And biding.
And later I would miss even bright days in scorning the leaves,
who live not to sing
but only to gather
and gather.
But what do you know
of flowers that never fade?
I imagine they are not as innocent
or soft
as they seem.
I had heard it said but did not yet believe
that the soil is the flowers
and the roots are the flowers
and the ice is the flowers
and the fungus is the flowers
and the stems, and the leaves, and the sun, and even
the death.
Now
I wonder if the world
is one,
long
blossoming.