Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Little Buds, the End of March

There’s a ladybug in my lap, and I can’t argue with her loveliness; driven there by her awkward landing in my hair, with a buzzing collide not unlike that of a sudden good mood, so tender and ephemeral after it has dived headlong into recognition. The sun setting slowly, and Spring playing with my mind, untwining my hair and my Winter as I walk outside.

I’m voracity spent, wandering on a Spring night, the trees still bare enough to see the glimmering stars. I’m the child whose games are deadly serious, altering her mother to this reality by her solemn, forlorn looks. I’m crying inky tears, waking up slowly on mornings when the mist gathers on the soft shoulders of the mountains.

It’s the fates we can’t escape from that make us who we are. No use deciding what part we’ll play, for far too many roles will reach empty hands across the stage, each eager and urgent in its own way to be fulfilled, dramatized, needing just our voice to make them live. And I refuse to be limited by my own self-expectations. What I should be, the road to which paved by what I am, ever remains to be seen, and I will strive to no longer discard the tender everyday. The battered concrete, the unkempt bit of earth between street and landscape, the awkward brightness of man-made against a dull awakening Spring; they are not as they should be, as I, yet worth regarding, worth incorporating into my image of existence. The perception inside makes them alive, one moment at a time, just as my barely sprouting self, regarding the world from under a patchwork coat of identity-trying, really lives by what it hopes, not by what it’s been.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Peaceably Melting

The snow just about melted, and what remains so dirtied by the passing life as to recede peaceably into anonymity. Brightness above, through cloudless skies in swift procession to blinking Winter eyes, and the geese fly through it, plying their ancient melodies as they shift from peak to peak. Make by bed in the melting snow; piles of soggy crunchiness, disappearing in rivulets of shimmering possibility. Now is when we all change, from frozen expectation to trickling mobility which for a while muddies all boots who dare tread forward in hopes of Spring. I release myself, embrace slowly the season of working, learn my eyes not to flood with protective tears at the new brightness of days.

What becomes of my dear Winter? He slips away as a protective father gently releasing his strong grip on the seat of Spring’s first bicycle. We forget his majesty in the moment of first joy at glimpsing her emerging independence; delicate, still under his care, but developing openly away from him, showing her colors like moments of knowing laughter, unassuming, and terribly beautiful in her promise. She’ll one day meet her suitor in Summer, a gallantly robed youth, dashing, imperious, graced with the first wisdom of adulthood, hard work and enjoyment tempered evenly in his steady eyes. Still, now she dances standing on Winter’s hard shoes and we wait for her, wait for her freedom as we wait for ours. Could it be time now? Time to begin the thousand things brewing in the many starry nights we’ve passed. Melt away expectation with the drifting snow, for promises go far beyond the season they are sowed, and stay with us for many turns about our lonely Sun. Forgive me where I have failed to fulfill; I dream of a better tomorrow, holding good thought in the palm of my hand like sprouting seed, and wait for the rushing waters of a thaw to cleanse the dross of seasons past before I give my gift into the Earth.

Oil Painting by myself