Spring Life

The day began with rain and chill, but as evening approaches, the sky is clear. The sun is so bright it bleaches the blue out of the heavens. Behind the houses, the trees have filled out their foliage. They are no longer skeletons, but living bodies; no longer ink sketches on a white sky, but a moving painting, green and gold and amber, and all the shades in between. In the evening breeze, the leaves shimmer, shadows shifting. The windows are open, and neighborhood chatter drifts in from the sidewalk, women's voices, exchanging news in Spanish.

When the sun falls through the window like this--, when Spanish chatters on the breeze like this,-- when the sky is cloudless like this: I feel at home. This is my home, the sunlight. This is my home, the sky. These are my myriad homes, the shifting leaves, with evening light gilding them. Sometimes this city feels like exile, and this winter, mild as it was, felt like death. But spring is come again, the sun is shining again, the sky gives itself to me again, and this, this feels like life.

Spring Showers

On the city streets, the sidewalk trees are white and green. Their flowers are falling now. Every eddy of wind brings down a new drift of white petals. These settle slowly as snowflakes, strange in the sunlight. The day is bright and warm, weather for bare arms and bare feet. Yet drifts of white lie in the gutters and swirl in the street--spring's farewell to winter.

Meditations on a Spring Sunset

A swathe of lavender cloud veils the upper sky. At the level of the tree-tops (still skeletal, these), its color warms suddenly, glows like a summer peach. Behind the trees the sun is setting. The sky burns where it has passed. The houses hide the star itself now, but its light lingers. The trees in the west still proclaim winter, but the sky has softened and burst open into all the colors of summer.

The sun sinks further. The orange glow deepens and dulls. Lavender and peach, the clouds mingle. They breathe together.

In the top of the tallest western tree, a black plastic bag billows. It has been there for days, or maybe weeks, months. Sometimes it hangs quietly like some slow-ripening fruit. Other times it tugs at the end of the branch. I expect it to fly away like a bird.

A bird detaches itself from the tree in one place and flies briefly across the incandescent sky. Then I lose it. Is it in the tree again? Has it joined the clouds? Did it dip below the houses, is it following the sun down? to the place where it rests? (but the sun does not need rest, it is not alive. I need rest because I am alive: I need sleep, death's twin, and this need shows that I live.) Rest, it is the time for rest.

Spring Leaves

Washing dishes, I looked out the window--and the trees were green! The starkness of bare branches is yielding, day by day, to the complexity of leaves. Yesterday, discreet buds emerged. Today, they burst open. Tiny tender leaves, intricately curled and crumpled, complicated the outline of the tree. I no longer notice its black branches against the neighbor's white house. I no longer notice the house at all. I just see the leaves.

Even if the robins weren't chirping all day long, I would know that it is spring.

Spring

It's been almost a month since I posted. I think that means I need to post almost every day until the end of the month, which might be difficult because Spring has arrived! The sky is blue again. The trees burst into blossom and put out twists of leaves. In the park, the male pigeons strut about puffed up like turkeys, dragging their stiffened tails on the ground. The female pigeons turn their backs and walk away, pecking at the grass. (I don't have to play those games any more, and for this too I am so grateful.)

Thank God for sunshine burning hot, for the softening of tree branches bare for so long; for the darting sparrows, the strutting pigeons; for squirrels popping out from behind tree trunks, streaming across the grass; for the promise of green whispering leaves, for the memory of their shifting shadows and of the light that percolates through the verdant canopy, falling at last to mark the ground with overlapping circles of sun; for the arrival of Spring, for the nearness of Summer; for the covenant that the Seasons will keep turning, that Spring will never not come, that night will never be eternal; for the endurance of Life and for the end of sleep and cold and death; for Life and Light; for Himself.

Falling Leaves

There's never enough, really. Do, do, do, but the tasks keep coming, falling, like leaves from the swaying trees. Autumn is still on its way: leaves, stay with your trees! Don't come swooping down, unexpectedly. I am not prepared for this onslaught--not prepared for the flurry of leaves when the breeze brushes by--not prepared for the fluttering in my peripheral vision, in my face, in my eye when I whirl around.

I close my eyes, but the leaves keep falling, falling. I can't stop them. Suddenly gravity is calling, and every leaf is falling. Who am I to sing over Gravity's endless music?

Eventually the trees will be sleek and bare. Their spare lines will slice the sky, while their lush leaves fill the earth. Such extravagance, the bright leaves that fall, like expensive gowns shrugged to the ground. Scarlet, violet, russet, gold. So much color spilled heedlessly, because the trees know: When spring comes home, the leaves will grow again. Then no branch will lack for its emerald cloak. But winter is the time for dancing naked.

Why do I keep looking for a rake? What am I really looking for? A mountain of leaves, a landslide of colors. A place to leap.

Cicada Season

[I scrawled this poem on the back of a bookmark over the summer, and just rediscovered it...]

When the sunbeams fall
on the trees like a rainstorm, and

the breeze brushes
the green leaves, and

a buzz begins,
and boils up--then

under the humming maple,
I am the silent audience
for summer's symphony.

[Syntax overdose?]

Syntax trees sprout out of these sentences. Phrases grow toward the sun, with their roots in the words at the bottom. With every paragraph we utter, we plant forests of grammar-trees.

The syntacticians wander through the woods, wondering at the strange plants they find. Which surprising branches split and split again? Which twigs can we break off and take home? We will keep them in our pockets as charms against the beasts that might wander these dark woods.

The forest floor is strewn with the dried leaves of theories that once hung from these trees. Old transformational schemes crackle underfoot. Roaming about, we forget that under the ground there are real words, buried out of reach. The trees come to life: they are structure and shape, not dull diagrams. Growing far beyond the words they sprang from, the trees stretch skyward, and they branch and branch again. They explode out of the confines of minimalist theories, and into the blue space above. Their limbs reach for the light, like yearning arms. Twigs open outward, fingers ready to receive the sun.

As spring comes, who knows what flowers might blossom from these dry woods? And what mysterious fruit might follow? From these trees of words and ideas, understanding will someday grow.