It is spring today, this April day

Here’s something to consider. Perhaps we no longer assign months/quarters/extended spells of time to a season. Perhaps we identify a season day by day. Today, Monday, 4/14/2025, it is spring. Yesterday, Sunday, 4/13/2025, it is (was) winter. The day before, Saturday, 4/12/2025, it is (was)–I believe, I don’t really hold onto weather (perhaps why I have come up with this scheme), winter. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera [does anyone remember Yul Brynner enunciating this phrase? It was a long time ago. I must admit, nevertheless, I do remember.

But, yes, today it is spring! Orange Fuji and I took to the roads and trails.

moss and seasonal ponding. Leaves, predominantly oak remain, most others having returned to dirt or other elements. I think of it as oak protects. Maple, ash, birch, aspen, beech…. provide.
more moss and seasonal ponding (hmm, seasonal? after I just redefined/shortened the duration of its meaning? Perhaps, day to day ponding)
and amid the leaves in this site, skunk cabbage is emerging; it promises and it delivers
and delivers, and delivers! No stink yet, only one bract of not green in this photograph, but stink it will come!! It’s the smell of life, and then they wither and shrink back to dirt.
this very pretty, tiny green patch is cord moss; it is known also as water moss; a wet dirt dweller.

Then there were these ducks. Not a particularly helpful photograph. But perhaps one of you can see and know just what it is? Not mallards.

Things, life is so much clearer at hand. But I cannot carry everyone on my bicycle, so these photographs bring you with me on this day defined as spring.

It persists. Life persists. Good and bad persist. And we pass between leaning this way and that; rarely knowing which will be the next step, anymore than the next day.

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still

The above two lines are from the last stanza of T.S. Eliot’s poem, Ash Wednesday.

It is an incredible poem, but read it at your emotional risk.

Here two stanzas that, in rereading it just now, I find speaking to the start of this blog post. I had not held them in my head all the years since I last read the poem. I had not reached back in my memory for them. And yet, here they are, speaking:

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

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Author: Kate Hemenway

I like to explore, to observe. I like to be within what is around. There is always something to wonder about and to ponder. There is always something.. My favorite ways to get to places are bicycling and walking; or reading, or thinking, or asking. Please feel free to ask back, as I continue to wonder out loud, express joy or concern, or, sometimes, talk through my hat.

One thought on “It is spring today, this April day”

  1. T.S. Elliot’s Ash Wednesday is daunting indeed to read. But I enjoyed your excerpt. Was it Socrates who said a life unexamined is not worth living? Well my good friend that doesn’t apply to you. With your faithful Orange Fugi. Thank you! Sitting on the deck now listening to beautiful bird song. The neighborhood is alive with life. Later on the peepers will sing in the wetlands behind me. A lovely song I look forward to every spring. When all things are possible. Have a good evening. Eileen Sent from Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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