081: Celandine

A local weather update

Usually, I start each of these with an easy update on the local weather; something that people joke about as a small talk conversation starter, they loathe or dread, or perhaps some love it.

Personally, I lean toward thinking, why would we not talk about the weather?

It’s the one thing we can all see
and feel,
sometimes even taste.

It’s one of the first things that most of us check in the morning, determining what we will wear for the day, our shoes, maybe the bag we’ll pack our things into for protection or ease. Choosing for us whether our coffee will be warm or iced that morning. Contributing to our mood even? It’s not shameful to agree. I promise.

And maybe even some of us can agree on the conspiratorial thoughts on the weather…?

I say all of this to 1) justify/explain/validate why I start most of these posts with a comment on the weather and 2) to show what I notice as one of the initiators for most of my poems.

So, anyway, the weather earlier this week was what true spring feels like.
When you think back on old animated children’s movies, it was true to how it was this week.

Plants are flowering or budding,
trees are pruning their branches,
grass is claiming it’s land,
birds are flying, singing, and nesting,

colors are filling again.

It no longer feels like a bright, new canvas pressed tight and nailed to old wood.
It feels like the paint is being mixed on the palette and tested for color swatching

before the whole canvas is full again.

We like to remember and look for the caterpillars, the birds, and the bright flowers come springtime. And we always forget that to bring that, must come

the springtime storm.

Dark grey all day skies,
fresh petals lost and lay,
wind and breeze come with their force,
and the rain,

the non-stop rain.

I like walking in the rain. It feels peaceful and inspiring
and cleansing.

Walking the day after the rain,
I don’t like it. Not really. Maybe a tiny, tiny bit. But definitely not a lot.

It smells, mostly of sour, less of sweet.
It is messy, yet doesn’t call for the protection of rain gear.
It is humid, and muggy; I would rather feel the rain than sweat it.

Well, this day, I walked the day after the rain.

---

Celandine

Some things tell of spring;
          She is on her way
          swiftly and soon. 

The Bradford Pears are flowering!
          with beauty and blooms

                    must come debris and disease.
                              Not always strong enough in life's storms,
                           

                        Most of the spring is not.
The fields smelled of
                                              creeks today.
                                              And the creeks smelled of
                           the deep part of the creek as it does on a summer evening
                           after having bathed in the sun all day long.

The creeks
                                        always carry the weight and worries
                                        of the spring.
                                        And they just label it, "flooding."
                           If they don't flood,
                                        something must. Our minds?
                                                                       Our hands?
                                        You forget the weight when someone else
                                                          is holding it.
                          
                            Whenever the excess is pruned, dried,
                            ground for life is left. 

On our walk, I was looking for that life, the familiar friend I missed. 
I couldn't find her; maybe she wasn't ready.

                            A goldfinch sang.

                            She sang on a branch reaching out over the 
                            yellow trail flowers,
                            there she is.

Celandine and Daffodil, our spring bearers,

                our life found in the flooding.

---

I picked three little Celandine stems
on my last bit of walk before getting to the car to go home.
They graced my kitchen windowsill
for just a few days before they started to wilt.

Each of those days,
it rained.

What from spring can you bring into your home this week?
What can you notice on a rainy or day-after-rain walk?

May you be lifted by the colors, the songs, the warm(ish) breeze
that will soon bring the plenty.

Until next time,
Madeline