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| Magnolias Autumn Buds |
Putting the garden to bed this time of year: washing tools and reorganizing the shed, bringing in clay pots to keep them from cracking with the ice, heaping up spent vines on the compost heap. But also planting bulbs and green manure. Digging in the new grasses I found at the nursery end-of-season 40% off sale! And watching and observing ~ the leaves of trees, the birds, the sky, the animals, the temperatures, the sun's light, the berries...
Then my sister sent four 12th century Japanese poems about the four seasons and suddenly I discovered one of them present of actualized in my garden here. So I wrote my own 21st century, Starlight, Pennsylvania version. Just a few lines.
Bay Magnolia's buds are set,
Winter Rye is scattered,
Blue Grass roots are settling in,
Spring is here already.
The spring or new life is already present in the buds, the seeds, the roots ~ and in my imagination, energy, personal history, creative possibilities and potentiality. The discoveries may well take time; we might need some help, but there's no shame in that.
Even in the old wounds, the personal misfortune or upset, the resolution, insight, growth, learning, are already present. Often it is so close we don't see; we miss it.
We might try to catch an idea or inspiration that passes through our minds. Seize it! Write it down! We're getting older, we can lose it in a moment. And then hold the idea and let it ferment a bit: to write, to compose, to work in a new way with any kind of material: flour, dreams, watercolor, paper and pen, soil and seeds, fabric, clay, journaling. Maybe it's a book that's been sitting for too long, waiting to be read.
