Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Pantoum for spring


The tendrils unfurl,
reaching toward the sky.
Birds build their nests,
flitting through the forest.

Reach up
to touch the feather of a dream
as it flits through the forest,
enduring and silent as time.

To touch the feather of a dream
is to know the nearness of spring.
Enduring and silent as time:
the world's hope for new birth.

To know the nearness of spring
is a bird building its nest.
To hope for new birth
is the tendril unfurling.

{Photo is of some sort of pink, asparagus-looking plant that grew in little clumps in the Santa Fe National Forest. I wish I knew the name. We spotted them on a spring-time hike last year. They were very odd and wonderful.}

This poem is a bit of a cheating pantoum (reworking lines slightly here and there and everywhere according to my poetic puzzle-piecing). I love pantoums. I love form poetry. I think forms can provide great freedom within their parameters. I don't find them stifling though they often elude me. The poem above was a fun little exercise to get me thinking more deeply about spring.

There's so much talk of it these days. It seems to me that the arrival of spring is the greatest annual reminder of how totally committed we are to rhythm and pattern. We need, love, and enjoy the cyclical way of things. (At the end of each winter, we desperately desire the return of spring.) It is so refreshing to let that knowledge wash over me. The truth of it is very freeing: to understand oneself as a part of the whole rhythm of the world, participant and observer.


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