Wednesday, March 19, 2014

spring equinox


My shoulders like
the ground are paralyzed
and rivers frozen thicker
than for a hundred years.
In a matter of days,
ice and snow melt will heave
in fabulous dark crowds
across roads, fast-fingered
roots creep into cellars.

I feel in my body the
frozen waiting for this
migration, the
fear and the hope
of spring upbraided,
the synapses of earth’s
unfathomable brain,

cords of living matter
bulked, tapered, floating
elongated across
low places in requisite
water, full of fault
without intent.

I want to stem this
movement, protest
on the streets, protect
vulnerable farmers, the poor
dilapidated houses in the low city!

I want to fall on the earth
with hands cupped
to the sun, like a primordial
woman before her altar,
like that almond sliver of light
that falls a few hours a year
between stone walls!



14 comments:

  1. a first impression is that i like the poem, and i will be back to read it more fully ... but first, i want to ask about the word "chords" ... i thought, at first, that it might be a mis-typing for 'cords" ... but then, "chords" in its musical sense might be exciting here, though i need to think that through a bit more ... (sorry if i am just being dense) ...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. James, THANK YOU. Yes, it was a typo. Fixed! :)

      Delete
  2. So beautiful, Ruth! Wonderful, wonderful imagery, and the last stanza is especially powerful. I also like the line, "the fear and the hope of spring unbraided." We associate spring with hope, but hope always dances with fear. Something here reminds me of Eliot's opening line in "The Wasteland" — "April is the cruelest month . . . "

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you so much, George, for the lovely comment. The broken images of Eliot's poem do make connection here. In our case, winter did not keep us warm, and it seems yet more cruel that we go from its brutality to a frightful spring. But again, nature does not intend to be cruel. Besides, these climate extremes are our own doing.

      Delete
  3. i feel through this poem the connectivity of all things and as george points out, the unification of hope and fear. life quakes and there is more than the simple to approve. the whole world feels like the corded grey matter of the brain with its synapses threatening spark. it is very exciting but with awesomeness, not with the curlicue sprigs of green we're accustomed to, thus your desire to protect.

    and jesus, the language unfolding, but all i might do is quote you back to you so that i might feel it unfurl again in my own mouth,

    "I feel in my body the
    frozen waiting for this
    migration, the
    fear and the hope
    of spring upbraided,
    the synapses of earth’s
    unfathomable brain,

    cords of living matter
    bulked, tapered, floating
    elongated across
    low places in requisite
    water, full of fault
    without intent."

    and without intent! how important this is.

    but yes, as it is for george it is for me, the last stanza. i crack open with the gravity of such an observation, such an importantly weighted minor (major!) event!

    (almond sliver of light)))) i can't miss telling you i could smell almonds as i was rereading this this evening, felt the meat of them reflected through the grey cording and rivulets of soil. but of course i was remembering reading your poem this morning. had to be. - and now i am reminded of something i saw with Marina Abramović - the starving of the body's senses and quite literally hunger made astute and then feeding the body with almonds. what a sensual experience it was for she and those she had participate, what a feast of real nutrition, just as the almond sliver of light is to the great fast of winter.)

    xo
    erin

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Erin, I receive all your wonderful thoughts with gratitude. It is so interesting that the almond has connected with you this way. I added that word to sliver about an hour after posting the poem. I do not know where it came from, or why the word seemed the right adjective. I don't think of the shape of the slivered opening at Newgrange, for instance, as almond-like. And yet it came. So I wonder if it was there in your first reading at all? And if you simply had the smell and sent it to me. :)

      Maybe it was my subconscious retrieving images of almond trees in blossom that I have only seen, never experienced in person. Van Gogh's beautiful paintings of them, and the groves of them in Spain and Greece. I have heard that their smell is otherworldly. Imagine creating such a smell, of the almond itself, and the blossom. There is nothing like it for sensuality. Your memory of the story [performance?] by Marina Abramović seems perfect in earthiness, wonder and life.

      Abundant thanks. xo

      Delete
  4. Interestingly, dear Ruth, I read this entire poem in the context of your new grandbaby-girl being born any day or minute now. I saw her primordial yawn in apparent ho-hum boredom, as though this breaking forth from winter is nothing that earth-shattering at all. More hope than fear, I pray. Much more life than death and nothing but joy to drown the low city.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Boots, what a beautiful comment. I think you must be right to read the poem with her in mind. She certainly has no expectations, only needs. :)

      Delete
  5. What will happen, will happen. And yet we must interact, as human beings, with nature, for good or bad. We are part of nature, but often a destructive part — all the worse because we can help it. We pity, we protest, we pray, we praise. Lovely poem, Ruth.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sometimes I imagine what it would have looked like if we had interacted with nature in all the right ways, Robert. I wish someone would make a film about this kind of utopia, with a Native American-like approach to the spirit in all things. But that's just fantasy, and as you say, we've got what we've got now, and we pity, we protest, we pray, we praise. What else can we do? Thank you.

      Delete
  6. I went to New Grange and saw the small opening over the door that catches the sun's rays for a short time once a year and ushers it between the stone walls and into the central, womb-like room where worship was performed. Your final stanza reminded me of this, both of them gorgeous.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mary, Newgrange is just the place I pictured. I've been twice. It's quite a feeling when they turn out the light and replicate the sun's rays falling on the altar. I think about such people, before the last two hundred years, and how utterly reliant they were on the earth, many not surviving through a bad winter like this one. It is humbling.

      Thank you.

      Delete
  7. Oh, I hear the hunger for sun,,,
    Hope it comes soon and warms you deeply.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi Ruth -- not sure my first comment took; I simply said I thought your imagery was beautiful and this was a perfect poem for the equinox -- especially this year's. Lovely.

    ReplyDelete

All responses are welcome.