Today is very beautiful—just as bright, just as blue, just as green and as white, and as crimson, as the cherry trees full in bloom, and the half opening peach blossoms, and the grass just waving, and sky and hill and cloud, can make it, if they try...You thought last Saturday beautiful—yet to this golden day, ’twas but one single gem, to whole handfuls of jewels. Emily Dickinson in a letter to her brother Austin, when she was 23
Sigh.
I’m not much given to swooning; however, a well placed ’twas in the midst of such delicious writing as this might have me loose my grip on my metaphoric parasol and sink into the grasses below a tree in order to recoup my faculties.
The long stretch of fall and winter are not without a richness of sensory delights... the earthy elemental palettes of grey tones and browns, the subtle shadings and the shadows on snowfall. The cold-blue clarity of sky and air that pricks at my cheeks and spirit...Lentil-thick vegetable soups and dunk-sustaining bread...
Right now, though...right now I’m longing for spring. For bud and colour burst, for the leaping greenly spirit of trees (Oh, there I go weak-kneed again...ee cummings, you master of abstract linguistic sculpture...). My legs long for ambling and my hand reaches for a pen to write the photographs before me... Oil and vinegar, mustard and lemon, seem to scoot closer together in the kitchen, asking to dance into a dressing for fresh greens and roasted vegetables. I put a large cloth napkin back into my satchel...on the off-chance hope I might find myself with a portion of park bench and the makings of a personal picnic...
Spring is Whitman and wandering; it is road-tripping and new nest building; it is knapsack and ink pen, watching, noticing, sighing, and yes... upon exquisite occasion, Spring is swooning...with poetic appreciation for the heart’s own capacity to be moved, to marvel, to create, to dream.
Sigh.
I’m not much given to swooning; however, a well placed ’twas in the midst of such delicious writing as this might have me loose my grip on my metaphoric parasol and sink into the grasses below a tree in order to recoup my faculties.
The long stretch of fall and winter are not without a richness of sensory delights... the earthy elemental palettes of grey tones and browns, the subtle shadings and the shadows on snowfall. The cold-blue clarity of sky and air that pricks at my cheeks and spirit...Lentil-thick vegetable soups and dunk-sustaining bread...
Right now, though...right now I’m longing for spring. For bud and colour burst, for the leaping greenly spirit of trees (Oh, there I go weak-kneed again...ee cummings, you master of abstract linguistic sculpture...). My legs long for ambling and my hand reaches for a pen to write the photographs before me... Oil and vinegar, mustard and lemon, seem to scoot closer together in the kitchen, asking to dance into a dressing for fresh greens and roasted vegetables. I put a large cloth napkin back into my satchel...on the off-chance hope I might find myself with a portion of park bench and the makings of a personal picnic...
Spring is Whitman and wandering; it is road-tripping and new nest building; it is knapsack and ink pen, watching, noticing, sighing, and yes... upon exquisite occasion, Spring is swooning...with poetic appreciation for the heart’s own capacity to be moved, to marvel, to create, to dream.
And glory...there’s still summer to come...
and zinnias stand as firm and quiet as old valorous deeds...
--E.B. White, from the piece ‘Late August’ written for The New Yorker.
(I’m looking for a tree already...)
and zinnias stand as firm and quiet as old valorous deeds...
--E.B. White, from the piece ‘Late August’ written for The New Yorker.
(I’m looking for a tree already...)
No comments:
Post a Comment