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Sunday 9 April 2017

Spring in pictures and words

“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.” 
― Rainer Maria Rilke



“Spring is not yet here, but the song of a solitary, pioneering blackbird when I wake, the smell of something warm and floral on the air in fleeting moments, these signs give me hope.” 
― Tracy ReesAmy Snow


The morning, happy thing,
Supposed that he had come to dwell,
And life would be all spring.” 
― Emily Dickinson


“Come with me into the woods where spring is
advancing, as it does, no matter what,
not being singular or particular, but one
of the forever gifts, and certainly visible.” 
― Mary OliverDog Songs




And Spring came the day after tomorrow,
I would die peacefully, because it came the day after tomorrow.
If that’s its time, when else should it come?
I like it that everything is real and everything is right;
And I like that it would be like this even if I didn’t like it.
And so, if I die now, I die peacefully
Because everything is real and everything is right.” 
― Alberto CaeiroThe Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro






“Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"...
"It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...” 
― Frances Hodgson BurnettThe Secret Garden


“The snow has not yet left the earth, but spring is already asking to enter your heart. If you have ever recovered from a serious illness, you will be familiar with the blessed state when you are in a delicious state of anticipation, and are liable to smile without any obvious reason. Evidently that is what nature is experiencing just now. The ground is cold, mud and snow squelches under foot, but how cheerful, gentle and inviting everything is! The air is so clear and transparent that if you were to climb to the top of the pigeon loft or the bell tower, you feel you might actually see the whole universe from end to end. The sun is shining brightly, and its playful, beaming rays are bathing in the puddles along with the sparrows. The river is swelling and darkening; it has already woken up and very soon will begin to roar. The trees are bare, but they are already living and breathing.” 

― Anton ChekhovThe Exclamation Mark



“The deep roots never doubt spring will come.” 
― Marty Rubin


“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything. (Sonnet XCVIII)” 
― William ShakespeareShakespeare's Sonnets





It always amazes me to look at the little, wrinkled brown seeds and think of the rainbows in 'em," said Captain Jim. "When I ponder on them seeds I don't find it nowise hard to believe that we've got souls that'll live in other worlds. You couldn't hardly believe there was life in them tiny things, some no bigger than grains of dust, let alone colour and scent, if you hadn't seen the miracle, could you?” 
― L.M. MontgomeryAnne's House of Dreams





“When the groundhog casts his shadow
And the small birds sing
And the pussywillows happen
And the sun shines warm
And when the peepers peep
Then it is Spring” 
― Margaret Wise Brown


“She could feel magic in the quiet spring day, like a sorcerer’s far-off voice, and lines of poetry floated over her mind as if they were strands of spider-web.” 
― Stella Gibbons


“Spring is far more than just a changing of seasons; it’s a rebirth of the spirit.” 
― Toni Sorenson


“Woods were ringed with a colour so soft, so subtle that it could scarcely be said to be a colour at all. It was more the idea of a colour - as if the trees were dreaming green dreams or thinking green thoughts.” 
― Susanna ClarkeJonathan Strange & Mr Norrell


“who knows if the moon's
a balloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky--filled with pretty people?
( and if you and I should

get into it,if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people

than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen 
city which nobody's ever visited,where

always
it's
Spring)and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves” 

― E.E. CummingsCollected Poems



The year’s at the spring
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hillside’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His heaven –
All’s right with the world!
—Robert Browning


“Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.” 
― Robert Frost

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.” 
― Henry David ThoreauWalden
“If we surrendered
to earth's intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.” 
― Rainer Maria RilkeRilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God


I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.” 
― Mary OliverA Thousand Mornings



There Will Come Soft Rains 

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.” 
― Sara TeasdaleFlame and Shadow

“I perceive God everywhere in His works. I sense Him in me; I see Him all around me.” 
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau



“I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful.” 
― Pete Hamill

“Under the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me
And tune his merry note,
Unto the sweet bird's throat;
Come hither, come hither, come hither.
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.” 
― William ShakespeareAs You Like It

“I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.” 
― Gustave FlaubertNovember


“Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances.” 
― Charles Baudelaire

“He smelled cold water and cold intrepid green. Those early flowers smelled like cold water. Their fragrence was not the still perfume of high summer; it was the smell of cold, raw green.”
― P. Harding

“...as young and as ancient as Spring....” 
― J.R.R. TolkienThe Lord of the Rings

I welcome spring for its promise, for its breath of life, its songs and even its capriciousness, As the days grow longer, hope grows stronger.

Tuesday 4 April 2017

On marriage

Today is the anniversary of my marriage to my husband. Some people call their spouses "the love of their life" and they are not wrong, but for me the words seem too much of the realm of fairy tale to ring true.
Marriage in its new stages is a promise to love through, and despite the storms, which may ravage the life of one or the lives of both partners. It is a promise to hold onto each other no matter what lies ahead.
Marriage which has weathered the years is a distilled love. One which may lack the full headiness of young love, but is more powerful. It is a knowing love. Shared trials, losses, worries, arguments are tempered with renewed promise, forgiveness, understanding, strength, and gentleness. There is a complexity to an old marriage which makes it all the sweeter for the entwining of two minds and hearts which have grown together like the trunks of two birches planted together: each supporting and leaning lending their parts to a greater whole.

So my husband, Matthew, is so much more than "the love of my life". I free him also from the shackles of that term.

He is the extension of my thoughts as I am his. His knowledge is mine and mine is his. His triumphs are better than my own, mine are partly his for he gives me what I need, as he is able. His failures shadow me as much as they do him; mine creep or roar into his light. Though we do not always get it right, together we shelter each other.

We each remain distinct, two beings in one marriage. Before we married his bachelor self viewed marriage as  "a slippery slope" into what he was not certain, but it was to be avoided if possible. He can no longer remember what ominous idea lurked at the bottom of this slope. The landscape of marriage has slopes and hills, plateaus, rivers, oceans, mountains, frozen ponds, bog, desert, and gardens lush. I would not trade a single one for a wealth of unbroken sky unending. If one looks up, the sky is always visible from any vista.

I have many loves in my life. I did not divest myself of parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends when I married him. They remain loves of my life, many of them from my earliest memories. Romantic love is deepest deep, but not for me exclusive tenant of my heart. When our two daughters were born, my heart and his grew to an unforeseen dimension, measureless, ever expanding. They are different loves for each us and certainly loves of our lives. Our new grandson, Remi, is a love of our lives as we are shown, again, the infinite capacity a heart has to love.

When we married, we each gained new family and friends whom we have come to love for and with each other. They are all loves of both of us. When we welcomed our son-in-law, Mikhail, into our family we gained another love of our lives.

The idea that one person, no matter how wonderful, talented and loving, can be everything to another person seems impossible to me. I  know I cannot be everything for my husband. He needs his friends, his family and his own pursuits to enrich him in ways I cannot. I would not so limit him.  So it is with him and I. Long marriage has cured me of expecting him to be what he cannot be for me. To wish it other diminishes the freedom and quality of love. To wish it other denies me the pleasure of the other loves of my life, and seeing him prosper in his.

The word "friend"  derives from Old English  freond meaning "the loving one".  He is my best friend in this sense, but even here I rankle at the ranking of love. The loves in my heart are circular, not vertically arranged. He is my husband, I his wife. What that means is beyond expressing, as every attempt to do show falls short of what it is.
 Happy anniversary to you Matthew. I am grateful for what we have shared. I am grateful we are together to look forward to the days ahead. I thank God for you and for giving us the courage, strength and joy to continue to work on our marriage.