“Spring doesn’t see you. Raw, boundary-less, wanton, ritualistic, amused by games like mud season and fledgling toss, exploding in bogs, playing peek-a-boo between clotted, dead stalks, pushing tender buds into the arms of a blizzard, every last dime spent, pockets turned inside out, doesn’t care about you. But I do. I saw you light my way. As I knelt with my clumsily rolled tobacco, on the ground where I’d given myself away, my heart suddenly couldn’t hold the enormity of you. The one who saw all my seasons turn, & time pass, dripping patience & grace onto the rock strewn dirt. Maybe as far as that goes, I’ve never lived without. You came when I’d lost everything, not just the first time, but several times in and another round past that. Thinking I could never leave a place I’d planted with children, and sown with tears. Spring is that chaos that’s going to happen regardless of your best efforts. When things don’t return to normal and you can’t go back. So, I’m dismantling old outbuildings, or directing a machine to knock them down, and hanging my coats on new pegs that are almost too high to reach. I’m sitting on my tailgate, on a new road, in a new light. Even the sound of a mountain stream is new and I’m oddly comforted, having never lived next to the rushing water I crave. People around here will have to get to know me, and I will, shyly and with fears I’m unable to explain, get to know them. The road dead ends a stone’s throw, if you have a good arm, from my mailbox. The trail beyond curls up under cliffs & into a wilderness swath, & I can feel in my spine already the miles I’ll walk here. On a search and rescue mission, I suppose, to know if I’m still feeling unloved or shamed. They say to us parents to put our own oxygen mask on first because they know flying in turbulence though higher is just like driving these twisted, frost-heaved roads. Once or twice today I sunk in up to the axles, really not great, damaging the truck, beleaguering me with miles of unpredictable turmoil. Oh for sure, heavy lifting is a dance card I’ve got, this time around. But, you, you’ve never changed your position. As I took a symbolic drag off that smoke, and passed it around to the four directions, I wasn’t unlike the crows & ravens up here, circling right into your lap. You’re like that. You know my wheels will eventually stop spinning. You don’t need to be obvious about it. The next generation if they want to understand life at a deeper level, will have to pick it apart. Now, they don’t care much. I didn’t either. Until it happened to me.”
