Daphne odora

 

THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

 

Spring Equinox

March 18, 2021

 

Kristen Sagan sent this poem just in time for our Annual Spring Issue!:

 

A Color of the Sky

 

Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,

driving over the hills from work.

There are the dark parts on the road

                     when you pass through clumps of wood   

and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,   

but that doesn’t make the road an allegory.

 

I should call Marie and apologize

for being so boring at dinner last night,

but can I really promise not to be that way again?   

And anyway, I’d rather watch the trees, tossing   

in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.

 

Otherwise it’s spring, and everything looks frail;

the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves

are full of infant chlorophyll,   

the very tint of inexperience.

 

Last summer’s song is making a comeback on the radio,   

and on the highway overpass,

the only metaphysical vandal in America has written   

MEMORY LOVES TIME

in big black spraypaint letters,

 

which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.

 

Last night I dreamed of X again.

She’s like a stain on my subconscious sheets.   

Years ago she penetrated me

but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,   

I never got her out,

but now I’m glad.

 

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.   

What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.   

What I thought was an injustice

turned out to be a color of the sky.

 

Outside the youth center, between the liquor store   

and the police station,

a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;

 

overflowing with blossomfoam,   

like a sudsy mug of beer;

like a bride ripping off her clothes,

 

dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,

 

so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.   

It’s been doing that all week:

making beauty,

and throwing it away,

and making more.

 

—Tony Hoagland  (1953-2018)

*

 

Kim sent this:

 

Oregon Dawn in Spite of the News

 

Before I can get to our statistics—so many 

stricken, so many dead—I’m summoned 

by the birds raising a ruckus outside, crows 

and jays in festive outrage, trill, chirrr, and aria 

 

from the  little brown birds, the mournful

dove, the querulous towhee, rusty starlings

in their see-saw mutter, and a woodpecker

flicker hammering the gutter staccato.

 

On the porch, I’m assaulted by the merciless 

scent of trees opening their million flowers,

as I inhale the deep elixir of hazel, hawthorn, 

maple, and oh those shameless cherry trees.

 

And just when I’ve almost recovered 

my serious moment, I gasp, helpless to see 

the full queen moon sidling down 

through a haze of blossoms.

 

—Kim Stafford

*

 

E. E. Cummings has so many poems of spring springing.  In this one we can remember our youth and the joy of suddenly sunny play days and school letting out:

 

in Just- 

spring          when the world is mud- 

luscious the little 

lame balloonman 

 

whistles          far          and wee 

 

and eddieandbill come 

running from marbles and 

piracies and it’s 

spring 

 

when the world is puddle-wonderful 

 

the queer 

old balloonman whistles 

far          and             wee 

and bettyandisbel come dancing 

 

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and 

 

it’s 

spring 

and 

         the 

                  goat-footed 

balloonMan          whistles 

far 

and 

wee

 

May you know peace and well being this weekend on the spring equinox when things are in balance in the cosmos and the rain and the sun are in concert with one another. 

 

—Love, Katie

*

 

O sweet spontaneous

earth how often have

the

doting

 

          fingers of

prurient philosophers pinched

and

poked

 

thee

,has the naughty thumb

of science prodded

thy

 

      beauty       .how

often have religions taken

thee upon their scraggy knees

squeezing and

 

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive

gods

        (but

true

 

to the incomparable

couch of death thy

rhythmic

lover

 

          thou answerest

 

them only with

 

                             spring)

 

—e e cummings, published in The Dial, May 1920.

*

 

Spring, the sweete spring, is the yeres pleasant King,

Then bloomes eche thing, then maydes daunce in a ring,

Cold doeth not sting, the pretty birds doe sing,

Cuckow, jugge, jugge, pu we, to witta woo.

 

The Palme and May make countrey houses gay,

Lambs friske and play, the Shepherds pype all day,

And we heare aye birds tune this merry lay,

Cuckow, jugge, jugge, pu we, to witta woo.

 

The fields breathe sweete, the dayzies kisse our feete,

Young lovers meete, old wives a sunning sit;

In every streete, these tunes our eares doe greete,

Cuckow, jugge, jugge, pu we, to witta woo.

             Spring, the sweete spring.

 

—Thomas Nashe  (1567-1601)

*

 

SPRING

 

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring—

     When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

     Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

     The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush

     The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

 

What is all this juice and all this joy?

A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden. — Have, get, before it cloy,

     Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,

     Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

 

—Gerard Manley Hopkins  (1844-1889)

*

 

A Thin Sliver at the Door

 

All she ever needed was the one sliver of air that hovered between the door and the frame. That small space was a persistent invitation. She would look around and make sure no one was in the room, then quietly get up from her chair, turn sideways, and slip through the crack between the heavy oak door and its sash. The room left behind was dark and immobile, everything inert, waiting without expectation or possibility. But once through the door the air changed. It expanded in the light, vibrating. The world was hushed, but with a kind of openness—something was just about to happen. When she went out, when she slipped through that crack, the world changed and so did she. The resonant hum of the air struck a note of movement in her body and she became more lithe, more supple. And the light–of course, the light–that made all the difference. In the trees the leaves moved gently, dappled by the light. The ground seemed alive, as if it too would burst into motion—iridescent green, chocolate brown, gray-blue in the stones. She heard her own low humming but there were other songs as well, perhaps birds or even insects in the fields, perhaps the echo of a bell from the far buildings. When she was out here she didn’t need anything. Everything felt inviting and reassuring. She never knew how long she was outside, how much time had passed, since she never felt any tug of memory when she was there. She moved and listened and watched. That was all. And that was more than enough. But eventually in the back of her mind a small cloud would begin to gather, pulling her into its shaded heaviness. The cloud would become bigger and more compelling than the trees or the air and she would turn toward it reluctantly. The cloud covered more and more of her vision and she found herself looking for the door, the way back through the crack into the dark, static room. She was never sure how she actually got back in but would suddenly look around, groggily, and realize here she was again. Everything felt heavy. The world was dense. This last time, though, she remembered something—just as she was following the cloud, just as it grew to include her, she held her hand out to the nearest tree and touched the leaves. She pulled some from the lowest branch and held them in her hands. Even back in the room she had them. She looked down and saw their glittering green and inhaled their unnamable smell. She held them and remembered. She looked up to see that small sliver of air between the door and its frame. 

 

—Deborah Buchanan

*

 

Come Spring

 

The first warm days of spring, give them to me:

a tepid rain, crocus poking through last year’s leaves.

 

Give me the heart of it: pale yellow, frail blue,

trees bare but for the hard buds, the few birds.

 

To hear the screen door slam again. To shoo

the flies from the house, the bowled fruit.

 

I’ll take all of it, Mother of Summer, the smell

of manure shoveled over the potatoes. Diesel

 

fumes from the refuse truck. Scent of creek bottom,

feral, lime laced. Cracked effusion of rotting eggs.

 

Even sinus infections and rusty rake tines sunk

in rank earth near the shed. Mushroom spores.

 

The asthmatic crank of winter-bound bikes. Fevers,

flu, cold sores, loose ends. Even the crows,

 

hawking their dull black cloaks from the shiny wings

of iridescent spring. Let them ride the rippled air

 

over the barren Sunday parking lots, the farther fields,

where the weeds will grow thorny, wild and tall.

 

—Dorianne Laux

*

 

Kim Stafford & Alan Benditt suggested these poems from Emily:

 

A Light exists in Spring

Not present on the Year

At any other period —

When March is scarcely here

 

A Color stands abroad

On Solitary Fields

That Science cannot overtake

But Human Nature feels.

 

It waits upon the Lawn,

It shows the furthest Tree

Upon the furthest Slope you know

It almost speaks to you.

 

Then as Horizons step

Or Noons report away

Without the Formula of sound

It passes and we stay —

 

A quality of loss

Affecting our Content

As Trade has suddenly encroached

Upon a Sacrament.

*

 

Spring comes on the World – 

I sight the Aprils – 

Hueless to me until thou come 

As, till the Bee 

Blossoms stand negative, 

Touched to Conditions 

By a Hum. 

 

–Emily Dickinson

 

*

 

Alan also sent us some haiku, inspired by Spring:

 

Look at this world even its

grasses right under my feet

feed us 

 

Grasshoppers in the chilly breeze

sing

as if you’ll never sing again 

 

Spring rain:

a mouse is lapping

the Sumida River. 

 

—Issa

*

 

I don’t know 

which tree it comes from,

that fragrance 

 

Spring!

a nameless hill

in the haze.   

 

—Basho

*

 

the pheasant sings-

the earth turns into

various grasses 

 

I forget 

to remember the days –

yet these spring deer 

 

squatting

the frog observes

the clouds 

 

to be in a world

eating white rice

amid plum fragrance

 

—Chiyo-ni

*

 

”peace, love, happiness & understanding” is one year old! 

 

HURRAY!!!

 

It began on the Spring Equinox, March 19, 2020, as “peace, love & happiness,” a weekly newsletter. The “understanding” got added on June 25, 2020. I started thinking of it as a “journal,” rather than a “newsletter” at some point. It became bi-weekly, instead of weekly on December 10, 2020. Lots of friends have contributed images, poems and other writings, as well as suggestions for poems. 

 

THANK YOU!!! (in no particular order) to: 

 

Kim Stafford, Prabu Muruganantham, Deborah Buchanan, Lonnie Glinski, Shadrach Alexander, Charles Erickson, Nancy Yeilding, Josh Underhill, Howard Thoresen, Esther Elizabeth, Bill Faricy, Katie Radditz, Ken Margolis, Will Hornyak, Joshua Barnes, Ashley Lucas, Jeff Kuehner, Alex Tretbar, Bill Hughes, Doug Marx, Randall Brown, Jude Russell, Jeffrey Sher and Aaron Gilbert. (n.b. If you are a reader of “peace, love, happiness & understanding,” you are invited to contribute!)

 

Speaking of Aaron Gilbert… He was granted clemency by Governor Kate Brown, and got out of prison on February 25, 2021—twenty months early! I’ve had the pleasure of video-visiting with him by phone. Unsurprisingly, he’s happy to be out of prison! I’m looking forward to getting together soon in person—(with all the necessary safety precautions.)

 

peace, love & fecundity

Johnny