SPRINGSONG

Missive #81 - Transcribed Poetic Dictation with Vision

[The current phase of spring in Maine is stunning to me this year. I don’t recall any of my other writings explicitly reflecting on it. When you go back, the red-tipped branches of March, the snowdrops, the hope-bringing equinoxial first emergings are well-represented. As are the stages which follow in a couple weeks — the grand blossoming, the colorful cacophonies, the pollen bursts and fresh opened deciduous jewel leaves. The present stage is an in-between. The red-tips are gone, replaced with proto-green clusters. The hostas have started to spear up. The columbine, the speedwell, the ornamental onion (millenium allium) — all now green and bushing, some already with well defined leaf. The woolly thyme too, creeping nicely. Others have yet to awaken. The maples’ tips have become (it seems, overnight) laden with an almost yellow green. The weeping cherry out front has not opened yet, but too has grown heavy in the branches. And the birds — they are all out now. Loudly announcing. Today, after two weeks of my own heavy preoccupations, a rampant collusion of vision and verse came at once. A string of flowering deities and mythic figures, synced together in a wide web of sparkling gemspheres. The SPRINGSONG is here, the incessance, in and amidst the crumbling demolishing devastating~ ] Received 4/26/25 | 6:32-7:19pm

Listen to the Recitation:

SPRINGSONG
Listen; the birds are singing
The red tips of growth have gone green
We have left the beginning
And entered the thick

It is said the beginning is always the hardest
But the stage after is uniquely disconcerting:
Doubt comes, wed to enthusiasm
The rushing urge to sprout and unfurl
In a not-yet quite ideal environment
Dampening the movement — what seems
Hesitation is not recalculation
Bolstering in preparation for transformation
The red becomes bud becomes flower
Becomes leaf. The fruit fattens and makes seed
To continue a cycle of preservation, of mastication
From the labors of the soil, heating now past 55
The grass shall grow, in clusters of emerald
Soft fine fescue, where the bugs can winter
And shade themselves from hot sun
Avoiding avian eyes, always watching
The robin and the thrush, concerted
With sparrows of the house flirting
The clouds become dense and heavy overhead
Telling of rain, of storm, of wet fog
The horn blows from the east, over the hill
And gulls perch on highest peaks
We are surrounded by statues, looking out
At us from every moment at once, we stand
In the midst of all that made us
And of all we wrought, daze past
Long forgotten but in memorial, we wish
For an easier way — for things to get easier
Even just a small bit. We let go of slowness
We let go of effortlessness
And we ask for a surprise
To greet us this spring, an expected unexpectation
Something no one could have foreseen, no cloud
Portended, not even the monsters announced
Our beloved monstrousness has limits
Thankfully, I say, we are limited!
Do not disparage the bounds, relish
The finitude contains the wound
And, clean, wraps with poultice, fresh herbs
Cut and smashed in mortar and pestle
Prepared, a paste of green, the evidence
Of a rich, full life, given freely
To offer itself in healing, to a friend
Which is, even after everything, how and who
We are: friends to them, to the growing
Life everlifting, raising across lines of brethren
Which seem impassable, but are not real
When the hedges converge on a shared
Destination, w/here the limiting lines
Make compositions of the many sounds in symphony
New harmonies discovered—heard, not discovered
As they had been here all along, wistfully
Lingering and longing, as friends do
Gently, allowing the hostility, hearing
The desire to come together, to connect
One myth to another, Glooskap to Odin to Christ
To Attis to Mithras to Tammuz to Satyavan
To Zagreus, to Dionysus, to Osiris
To Inanna, to Persephone, to Ganesha
Krishna and Quetzalcoatl, Adonis and Amaterasu
And even, to Bodhidharma's one shoe—
We fall and rise, and fall and rise again
Immortal in their mortal context
The valley holds seasons’ renewal
In the bowl between four sacred mountains:
A wide flat plain, a meetinground
Of soul finding
Themselves a wise consortium
Millions of elders — billions — even more
Compiling a record to make even Bayt al-Hikmah
Blush, rose clouds flushing the pale
Red, pink, warm and fragrant
In joy, the satisfaction of our efforts
Climaxes in the ripe explosion of spring

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Marianne North, Foliage and Flowers of a Chorisia and Double-Crested Humming Birds, Brazil (1873) — a remarkable artist, contemporary and acquaintance-friend to Darwin, Frederic Edwin Church, Edward Lear (the nonsense writer, who also brought into the world many enchanting paintings)

Marianne North, Flor de Pascua or Easter Flower, at Morro Velho, Brazil (1873)

Henri Matisse, The Dessert: Harmony in Red (The Red Room) (1908) — the remarkably bold red wall began as green, then repainted blue, then finally to red

Frida Kahlo, The Chick (1945) — her health condition deteriorating, her father recently passed away, and her relationship with Diego collapsing