Almost spring
I peeked under the soggy mulch along the east side today and discovered the field pussytoes have plump green leaves and have spread farther along the garden bed. On the north side, stubborn clumps of snow have almost melted away with the soft rains these past two days.
Feels like spring is just about to pounce. That's what spring does in Minnesota, but it usually waits till May. We have 6 seasons here: winter (Dec-Mar), brown (Apr), spring (May), summer (Jun-Aug), fall (Sep-Oct), brown (Nov).
I thought could do without the brown seasons until I came across this passage from the book Sisters of the Earth: Women's Prose and Poetry About Nature . . .
"The Many and the One" by Barbara Dean
The day is cool, but the slope is sheltered from the wind, and its angle catches the full full power of the sun. I lie down, arms outstretched, motionless against the earth.
The earth molds itself to my curves: we fit. The sun reaches deep, through skin to bone, through surface to center. I smell the rich damp warmth of almost spring, see through my fingers and pores, listen with my bones, forget to breathe. . . .
I feel a deep, beatific relaxation. The boundaries that I think of as "me" are suddenly no more than illusion. My body's limits are a product of the same surface tension that allows a water bug to skate on top of a pond.
Now, as I lie here, the tension is released, the illusion suspended.
The varied personalities and centers of energy that make up my place on the hillside merge, and all of life flows into and out of one another. And the many--the wonderful, entertaining, diverse manifestations of life--become gloriously One.
Image: field pussytoes
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