It’s my favorite time of year, and I’ve found myself thinking a lot about my Alaskan home as we turn the calendar page. I remember well what April meant when I lived there. Melting snow. Mud season. Rivers breaking up. Fast-returning light.
“Spring is in the air!” I’d say, full of glee. “And it smells like thawing dog poop.”
Down here in the southland, none of the seasonal shifts that I’m used to telling time by are the same. The promise of spring doesn’t carry nearly the same weight. Nothing is so dramatic as going from living in the black and white movie of a long Alaskan winter, to the glory of the whole world exploding at once in a riot of green. It literally happens in the space of a day, across enormous swaths of untouched land, so vast and sweeping that, unless you’ve been there, it’s nearly impossible to imagine.
The change of season in Louisiana is much less extreme. Nonetheless, it’s still noteworthy, still a time marked by growth and renewal.
In the spirit of celebrating the miracle of resurrection, whatever that may mean to you, I am sharing a poem this week. It’s one I wrote in 2010, which I’ve taken out, dusted off, and reworked a bit for the occasion.
The Return
Sometime in April, it happens
Just when this corner of the world seems left for dead
Suspended interminably in deepest winter contemplation
Just when green and blooms and open water are forgotten
The way an orphan gives up all hope of touch
In April, it happens
First, just a few eerie echoes
And then, mounting
There are more calls, and more
Until the sky rings with a five-alarm warning:
Do not miss this, The Gazillionth Coming of the World
Wake up! Come out! Don’t forget, everything is still turning, tilting on its axis
Hearing the strange call
One must look up
What begins as just a few notes, soon swells to a cacophony
Like a fairy tale, we’ve been under a spell
Draped in cobwebs, frozen in time
But against the wild flapping and hollering
The grip of stillness that has held us stands sharply in contrast
Enough so that now, we can see how pale our faces have grown
How worn
Tattered and dull
The stale soul of winter is an old musty rug
That must be dragged to the freshening air
And beaten out
Like wings
The crust of sleepy-eyed hibernation sheds itself
And a thousand dust motes dance from the shadows to mingle
In the quickly returning light
The sound from On High falls around us like a promise
The days will lengthen back into the absence of night
One must look up
They are a living, breathing sign of hope
(It’s true about the hope and the feathers)
Buried so long under the snow
Thirsty roots, tangled in hiding
Have been busy in their own quiet way
Doing the important work of rest
Now there is a stirring, and we all rise
Spirits and Sprouts, alike
We are lifted through the heaviness of mire and unwaking dreams
Called
To reach heavenward toward the sound
And salute a bluebird sky
And so it goes, year after year
We forget joy
So that it can return anew
This same present, unwrapped again and again
Never gets old
Hell-bent, they make their way
Wild with haphazard flapping
In an organized chaos-chorus that slaps awake the world from drear
Calling even the bears to emerge
From their deep and dormant reverie
The land is born again, back into the light
With the cinematic score of this otherworldly song for a soundtrack
They come to us, chanting their Southern Goose Gospel
Its message, an important reminder: We are not the only ones
Hemispheres away, the Earth has been bathed in summery warmth
While here, like the leaves
We shrank and shriveled
Tucked in against icy wind, for a long and endless night
Harbingers of spring, resilience embodied
They spill in over the mountain tops
First, by the handful
Then, uncountable
A veritable thundercloud
For luggage, they carry only empty stomachs
And a simple song to urge on Spring
They call forth the greening
The way a newborn cry can make milk flow
Original collage art by the author, made from recycled magazines
Your lovely piece reminded me of how much I appreciate the shifting seasonal arc that marks a return. Here, way up in its corner, The Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, it’s “Mud Season” again and though not with the vivid immediacy you describe, it is far enough toward Ultima Thule to unfold at a noticeable pace, sometimes the pace of a lullaby. The “Mud Season” here can have, as this one does, torn shreads of dirty snow from a late storm. The crocus’ (croci?) are popping through snow and mud, indomitable harbingers of more and more light, as I suppose it is today for those who hold Easter sacred. For me it means the soft, waiting buds of trees will soon glow green, a resurrection of sorts, one I always loved as much as I love the autumnal darkening of a world going to sleep. “Nature never hurries… and everything gets done.”-Lao Tzu
Sing on! Happy Resurrection Stella!