I'm usually not sure what I'll write about when I sit down each morning at the window--I'm talking about my poetry. On the way down, I always look at the new day. Sometimes a glance is all I need. Something in the light, the play of things, an ease, a tension that hits home in a just-wakened mind. The first minutes, the first hour of being up, if you're lucky enough to have quiet--and I'm lucky in this--are heavenly: waking to the Garden, again.
It doesn't feel "heavenly" in the day after day of gray winter, but then it's easy, under April's inconstant sun, to forget the grind--this, the gift of not remembering. But each round of winter grooves its meaning deeper into the mind: explore every nuance of the gray, learn from what you don't like, accept its steely lessons, find, in the learning, some kind of comfort.
But now, April's inconstancy, her settling in, her moodiness, her promises: perhaps April's the very feel of what a promise is: hope and all that imperils it, on the spring side of things.
The magnolia's done, her tulip petals strewn pink-white with edges just beginning to curl back brown in a circle on the grass as wide as the tree they've fallen from.
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The molding's on. I made two mistakes, neither wasted any wood, but again I didn't pay enough attention, didn't move slowly enough, talk myself through the process. I mean talk to myself out loud: "Ok, now this is the shorter, side piece, so it needs...." So, in all, the job went well, except that the wall is not square; it's not even plumb, so caulk, the carpenter's friend, filled the gaps. No straight lines in Nature? Hardly any in an old house. So: there are your plans; the house's plan; and the job that evolves because of these facts.
What I love about carpentry is that each step is a choice; each cut a decision that has immediate consequences; the overall task is a step by step process, each step of which is vital to the outcome. Nothing is irrelevant. Everything counts. It's a dance between my wishes, the reality of the situation, and my ability to understand that reality. Thus, it is all learning, an archetype of what we're here to do.
It doesn't feel "heavenly" in the day after day of gray winter, but then it's easy, under April's inconstant sun, to forget the grind--this, the gift of not remembering. But each round of winter grooves its meaning deeper into the mind: explore every nuance of the gray, learn from what you don't like, accept its steely lessons, find, in the learning, some kind of comfort.
But now, April's inconstancy, her settling in, her moodiness, her promises: perhaps April's the very feel of what a promise is: hope and all that imperils it, on the spring side of things.
The magnolia's done, her tulip petals strewn pink-white with edges just beginning to curl back brown in a circle on the grass as wide as the tree they've fallen from.
*************************************************
The molding's on. I made two mistakes, neither wasted any wood, but again I didn't pay enough attention, didn't move slowly enough, talk myself through the process. I mean talk to myself out loud: "Ok, now this is the shorter, side piece, so it needs...." So, in all, the job went well, except that the wall is not square; it's not even plumb, so caulk, the carpenter's friend, filled the gaps. No straight lines in Nature? Hardly any in an old house. So: there are your plans; the house's plan; and the job that evolves because of these facts.
What I love about carpentry is that each step is a choice; each cut a decision that has immediate consequences; the overall task is a step by step process, each step of which is vital to the outcome. Nothing is irrelevant. Everything counts. It's a dance between my wishes, the reality of the situation, and my ability to understand that reality. Thus, it is all learning, an archetype of what we're here to do.
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