pjthompson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pjthompson) wrote2006-03-23 11:13 am
pjthompson) wrote2006-03-23 11:13 am
The marguerites of my soul
I noticed spring last night. I suppose it's been there all week, but I didn't see it until last night.
As I was driving down Lincoln where the Culver Blvd. bridge crosses just before Ballona Creek, I noticed my one true emblem of spring: the wild marguerites blooming on both sides of the highway. They're diminished in number from past years due to a new off ramp at Culver and extensive road work. Once they crowded so thick on the little hill rising towards the bridge that they were a luminous yellow cloud in the sunlight. I don't suppose they all bloomed together on the same day, but each year it seemed like it. One day they were just there, a golden host.
And I was so happy to see they'd survived, so happy to see them there. They're still beautiful, still make my heart rise.
When I got home, the yard was full of yellow daffodils and a few deep purple irises. I wondered how long they've been bloomed and I just haven't noticed?
Each spring is a cliché—in our minds, our words.
The real thing, the turning from ice to green
has power lovelier than words, inexpressible.
We struggle to paint a majesty of liquid light
thrumming through green skin, blazing yellow petals,
light bursting and unfolding, refracting a glory,
putting words to shame. We labor, anyway.
I try, anyway. Because the light is in us, because
the light is in me—pale, shallow, humming softly,
erratic and off-key—but alive again after winter.
Revised March 23, 2006
As I was driving down Lincoln where the Culver Blvd. bridge crosses just before Ballona Creek, I noticed my one true emblem of spring: the wild marguerites blooming on both sides of the highway. They're diminished in number from past years due to a new off ramp at Culver and extensive road work. Once they crowded so thick on the little hill rising towards the bridge that they were a luminous yellow cloud in the sunlight. I don't suppose they all bloomed together on the same day, but each year it seemed like it. One day they were just there, a golden host.
And I was so happy to see they'd survived, so happy to see them there. They're still beautiful, still make my heart rise.
When I got home, the yard was full of yellow daffodils and a few deep purple irises. I wondered how long they've been bloomed and I just haven't noticed?
Each spring is a cliché—in our minds, our words.
The real thing, the turning from ice to green
has power lovelier than words, inexpressible.
We struggle to paint a majesty of liquid light
thrumming through green skin, blazing yellow petals,
light bursting and unfolding, refracting a glory,
putting words to shame. We labor, anyway.
I try, anyway. Because the light is in us, because
the light is in me—pale, shallow, humming softly,
erratic and off-key—but alive again after winter.
Revised March 23, 2006