the spring bud…

Spring
by Jim Harrison

Something new in the air today, perhaps the struggle of the bud
to become a leaf. Nearly two weeks late it invaded the air but
then what is two weeks to life herself? On a cool night there is
a break from the struggle of becoming. I suppose that’s why we
sleep. In a childhood story they spoke of the land of enchant-
ment. We crawl to it, we short-lived mammals, not realizing that
we are already there. To the gods the moon is the entire moon
but to us it changes second by second because we are always fish
in the belly of the whale of earth. We are encased and can’t stray
from the house of our bodies. I could say that we are released,
but I don’t know, in our private night when our souls explode
into a billion fragments then calmly regather in a black pool in
the forest, far from the cage of flesh, the unremitting “I.” This was
a dream and in dreams we are forever alone walking the ghost
road beyond our lives. Of late I see waking as another chance at
spring.

Jim Harrison, “Spring” from Songs of Unreason. Copyright © 2011 by Jim Harrison. Used by permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press,

Making Love

Making love in Spring is “certain”!
Try it hanging from a tree, squirrel-y.!
Rabbit it in jumps in grass!
Pumping in a flash: gray and fur-y.!

“making” by Jeanne Poland

Definition #172 Up

Kavi celebrates Spring

Sun

up

Kavi

up

Easter

up

Footnotes

The word “Easter” and most of the secular celebrations of the holiday come from pagan traditions. Anglo Saxons worshipped Eostre, the goddess of springtime and the return of the sun after the long winter. According to legend, Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs, and that rabbit became our Easter Bunny. Eggs were a symbol of fertility in part because they used to be so scarce during the winter. There are records of people giving each other decorated eggs at Easter as far back as the 11th century.

Pattern #62 Praying Mantis

November Visitation

Graceful Mother Queen
secures her winter treasure
‘neath my shelt’ring roof.

Who left 400 babies to molt ’til Spring
in my care?

Pattern #48 Autumnal Russet

Gourds

Gourds hold seeds;
birth them when they need
to burst for winter’s
long siesta under snow.

Seeds grow seedlings;
tender shoots in baby green
spring up to sun
look for their mom.

Unfurl fresh leaves
reach out from stem
when summer’s dew
wakes sap in them.

“Til Fall again
grows gourds in russet reds
with seeds that burst
for winter under snow.