Spring
And here is the serpent again,
dragging himself out from his nest of darkness,
his cave under the dark rocks,
his winter-death.
He slides over the pine needles.
He loops around the branches of rising grass,
looking for the sun.
I step aside,
he feels the air with his soft tongue,
around the bones of his body he moves like oil.
toward the black mirrors of the pond.
Last night it was still so cold
I woke and went out to stand in the yard,
and there was no moon.
So I just stood there inside the jaw of nothing.
An owl cried in the distance,
I thought of Jesus, how he
crouched in the dark for two nights,
and floated back above the horizon.
–Mary Oliver
It’s springtime again, with a wild feeling of change in the air. Spring can take so many personas–from glorious early flowers blooming, to late snowstorms, to moody changing weather–and sometimes all in the same day. Greg Brown wrote a song called Spring Wind with a lyric, “A spring wind came and blew my list of things to do away.” It’s a time to recognize the changes that are already occurring and to align with new birth…not that it’s necessarily easy. Meanwhile, we notice that the message of spring is getting more intense as human caused climate change wakes us out of a sleepy nonchalance: tornado winds, flooding rainfall, extreme temperatures are all to be expected now. We participate in the earth’s soul, so these messages are about our lives too. How can we be fully present for the changes that are already happening, and for those that are coming?
