Few pleasures can compare to children’s when they are allowed untrammeled playtime in nature’s kind and pretty places. We should all be so fortunate in Springtime, especially in the springtime of our lives.
By Babylon Creek
Babylon Creek
used to make the
children laugh as it ran
tickling fingers up
their summer-heated shins
and the older folk
chuckle shamefacedly
at its puns and the way
its hilarious licking made
them squirm like
dog-loved kids themselves
ConservatoriesShells of glass to shield from winter
Leaf and flower, root and seed
Give the tender lives inside them
Shelter that they crave and need
In the warming arms of friendship
We in kind find safety, grace,
Shelter from the world’s hard trials
In that other shielding place
Cow Art
I wonder if you flinch at all
At cows upon the bedroom wall
That have great horns and twitching tails—
The massive cow that seldom fails
To win a ribbon at the fair—
Perhaps it’s odd to see them there
But I admire those cows, you see,
And like them watching over me
To fend off any sleepless nights
And fill my dreams with cow delights
How Cocooning Relieves Stress among the Hardworking
Behold the moth: he waxeth wroth, and sure has cause if any hath:
A life so short and labor-filled that many lesser moths hath killed;
Yet all’s not tragic, dire, dark things, for, briefly as he hath his wings,
He waxeth too his Silver Wraith; it shineth like a ghost, i’faith.
As caterpillars of his ilk produce the finest bolts of silk,
Yea, marvel at such industry, and bitter butterflies ne’er see,
For, selling such rich bolts of cloth, they’ve little cause for waxing wroth.
Yes, I do know that my photos here is of a butterfly and not a moth. Just as I’m sure you know that this poem is not a scientific treatise on the relationship between entomology and high-end automotive art. Anybody coming to this blog in search of hard data on virtually anything is clearly lacking in logic anyway, so welcome, all! And may none of you fall into the clutches of any lepidoptera with anger management issues or delusions of being silkworms, either one. Also, if you happen to be the computer programmer who designed my auto-correct function, to my knowledge a TelePrompter is in no way related to or a straight-across substitution for a lepidopteran in either linguistic or physical form, though it might amuse you greatly to experiment with such things. I do give thanks for the laugh.
Whether it’s only on my mind as a continuation of its recent theatrical theme is debatable, but I do think a great deal about location. More likely, perhaps, because whatever minute remnant of my Viking heritage remains in me is expressed in waves of desire to go, to be at or in, other places. It needn’t be out of dissatisfaction with my present; I’m simply aware at one level or another of how much great magic is Out There everywhere, luring me.
In any case, one of those relatively few things that will often set my heart racing is the image of a setting for some new act on my part. It may be quite specific–the upper room, reached by improbable set of impractical stairs, in an old clapboard chapel where I used to sneak away to daydream in the dust-glittering beams of attic light, perhaps. Other times, it might be more general, like that vague yet insistent itch to be at some glorious outdoor place defined more by its unsullied native air, free of any human-made flaw and full instead of the intimate stirrings of the natural world. Sometimes my soul inclines toward places known, and others, to something that may not yet even exist.
Perhaps the latter is my cue to see that there are places I myself should be inventing and shaping. Mayhap there is a scene–is an entire tale–yet to be writ, precisely so that I can be the first actor on its stage. Do you suppose that this is how we must address Life to fully inhabit it?
Places, everyone!
Cats are nature’s hate-seeking missiles. If there’s a houseful of guests, only one of whom dislikes or is wildly allergic to felines, everybody knows that’s where the household cat will make a speedy beeline and glue itself to the ankles of whichever sufferer would rather the cat were somewhere about a thousand miles away. As it happens, when they choose to do so, cats can also sense affinity. Some are so quick to attach to the humans who will indulge their every whim that they must probably have a sense transcending the dimensions we with our merely mortal five senses perceive.
In both, I have seen parallels in human form. There are some who manage at every turn to recognize quickly and attach themselves instantly to others who will love and appreciate them and all their gifts—and some, conversely (or perversely) who have only the knack of finding and sinking their hooks into people who would rather they were about a thousand miles away.
A Whiff of Happiness
While all you two-legs types are mired
And wallowing in wintry fear,
I see spring’s hints and am inspired
To smell the happiness from here
What gain or merit mankind finds
In only frigid, dormant joy,
When you could wag those sad behinds,
Dance forward, every girl and boy—
Hold on to sorrow if you must,
While I lap up those thrills made dear
By breaking through the frozen dust:
I smell the happiness from here!
Farm Land
Few things can match the beauty of
Black soil that’s newly tilled
And redolent of things to come
As soon as March’s chilled
Cold heart has given up his hold
And April’s warmth begun
To set the life-renewing pulse
Of earth under her sun.
Daybreak ReturnsFrom the grasslands, from the marshes, from the margins of the moor
Rise up misty ghostly creatures in the pearly light of dawn,
Some mementos, revenants or sylph-like spirits past and gone
To the brink of ancient memory and up to its creaking door,
People whom we, fond, remember or with some frisson of heart,
Those who populate our past, storied as fabled gods and kings,
Filled with magic and wild treasure and a million pretty things
That we wish we might have honored as such value from the start—
So at daybreak they come whispering, returning, silver-grey
Without tarnish in their sterling, as they rise up in our sight
And return to us those memories had fallen into night,
Bringing back that love and loveliness of theirs to present day
Though he may well have sprung from the roots of ancient earthbound deities, the Green Man remains alive and well and, at this season, inhabits garden and woodland alike, filling sun and shadow with his mischievous magicks. And this presence is a very welcome thing indeed. Few things can compare with the appearance of those tender sprouts, however miniscule and vulnerable, that bring new signs of life to the winter’s loamy floor, unfurl their banners on the tiniest twig of the smallest shrub. The mere sight of one small tip of leaf can bring an upsurge of life to the dormant veins of even a hardened person who’s waited through the dark and chill for newness to arrive.
Did the long freeze of January kill that little sapling that I found? No, here’s the faint, alluring swelling of a bud, the blushing edge of a leaflet, soon to open wide in exuberant yellow-green shouts of Spring. Has the ice of the short days and long, long nights wholly buried and killed my favorite herb, both branch and root? No, I see a hairline stripe of promising verdure in the bony bark of its woody little stem. Life is a bold, determined act, and with its brazen call brings out the denizens of Earth, first the bud and then the bloom, one small broken seed shooting out a multitude of growing things at the conjuring wave of the Green Man’s hand. Like him, I cannot help but grin when the world begins again to wake in leafy laughter.
