the truth of spring
[17 February 2012…the end]
An end to a beginning — of sorts. A sort of true false-start. The story won’t necessarily start zooming along yet, but the tide has turned. The wind has changed. And there’s no settling back down.
Six out of the first seven days is a miracle — to her. Oh to get all that’s been stored up inside, out on the page. It’s like logging and capturing old footage, hoping that in the midst of it all stories will start springing up.
She remembers two years ago as she first listened to Jónsi’s album, walking through Hyde Park and seeing spring. Thinking that was the time when new things would come. Sometimes the ground must lie fallow for a long, long time.
She’d forgotten about her new year’s resolution, only to realise she’s living it out right now. To not react. But to live. To be proactive.
She remembers how that spring day (two years ago) she’d somehow been afraid to lay on the grass. Someone might see. Looking back it seems such a ridiculous pathetic triumph. But it was a victory, nevertheless, that she did lay back and look up at the sky. So when she heard the words “no one knows you, till it’s over” she could think the deeper thought that, maybe that meant even her; that’d she’d be surprised by who she could be, when it’s over.
It’s a little daunting now, to have finished sharing that February week. When I first thought of starting this blog, the only tangible idea I had was to share that week. And now it’s done. What comes next? More ‘relics’ from old journals and scraps of paper, travel stories, poems, quotes, pictures, and new ponderings. I don’t have to know today what I can and will write tomorrow.
Here’s that Jónsi-inspired poem I mentioned above:
jónsi sang go
i thought i was ready to throw off
winter’s weight as soon as spring
peeked from the ground, softened
the stark dark trees, that i too
could again be green and colour
and soft earth, but the cold
deadness clung with suffocating
hands to its post, dug in deep
and obstinate. so i took jónsi on a walk.
out through the sunlit streets, filled
my eyes with petalspetalspetals
all orangeredyellowwhitepink.
the magnolias bursting – branches
once heavy burdened with snow
and ice – now in flight against blue sky
waving their arms adorned (aburst!)
with pinkwhite blossoms, sharing
their glory with the grass below – a sprinkling
of pinkwhite salt seasoning the green.
my feet sang along – starting and stopping,
turning, slowing, lifting (sometimes imagining
in their minds – twirling) and then i found a tree
and sat beneath it when what i really wanted
was to lay on the grass, gazing upit took a moment, but my feet
talked me into it – “go do”
they sang with jónsi – so i lay back
and the streets were no more –
just me, the tree, the blue and
masses of white cloud creating
a moving landscape beyond
the dark stark branches
sprinkled with leaf buds.
occasionally birds flew past.
and once a dry brown leaf skittered
from the ground up over me
its dead dryness somehow
a part of this simple playful
scene of bluewhitebrown
while i lay, one with the green“no one knows you, till it’s over”
maybe that means even me.
maybe i’ll be surprised by
who i can be when it’s over.
# beth mercer | April 2010
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