A Deep River Year  - 2017

How quickly the beauty that may be all around us can come to be seen as ordinary. Here in late March the snow is nearly gone and clumps of snowdrops are blooming everywhere. Two or three weeks ago we would have stopped to gaze at them with joy, perhaps even to celebrate such a lovely foretoken of Spring. But now they have been around for weeks, and the lawns and woods seem to abound with them. It is no big deal to announce that you have snowdrops in your yard. Everybody does. 
 

And this is true of other things, too. The magnificent and huge maple tree outside my window right now is old and gnarled and stalwart in the March wind. If the same tree rose somewhere on the prairie, it would be given a name and heralded as a local tourist attraction. I watch squirrels at the feeders in my yard with amusement. Some people look at them with disdain and would rid the neighborhood of them. But what if there were only one squirrel in all the world, and it showed up in my yard. I would be out there to take its picture, to marvel at its agility and cleverness, to remark on its glorious tail.


I should find such beauty in all the common components of my life. Look at my hand, this amazing machine that holds a pencil and scratches my head and feels the softness of my wife's face. Behold a cup of water, that material which takes the shape of its container, falls from the sky in silver beads, and runs down a dry throat with delicious coolness. See our cat, Ming, stretched out over on the radiator, purring with satisfaction, incscrutable as he looks at me through half-opened eyes. I as sure that he is unimpressed with how beautiful I am, too.
 
 Snowdrops


You are lovely
out there in the debris
of forgotten summers,
there among the fallen branches
and the bones of mice.
And now you have risen
into the cold light
of a reluctant season,
and, awakened,
have been buried again
by unwelcome snow.
But you endure,
your tender bells
silent in the wind,
thousands of you
in wood and field,
inviting the first hungry bee
to discover
the simple loveliness
of you.


--Timothy Haut

A Deep River Year - 2017

On a crisp morning in November I picked the last cherry tomato hiding anbg the sprawling vines spilling over our garden fence. That tomato was almost as sweet as the first one I popped into my mouth on a warm summer's day, and perhaps it seemed even better because it had lasted so late into fall.


I am thinking tomatoes again today, as we hunker down inside our 19th Century New England parsonage while a snowstorm blows outside. It is mid-March, when Spring should be making an appearance. And indeed it has, in fits and starts. Early crocus appeared, but are now covered with snow, and the delicate snowdrops are buried, waiting for their moment in the sun to return. Last week we drove down to the marshy woods where we always hear the first songs of the Spring peepers, and sure enough, the little frogs were filling the night with their amorous chorus. No doubt today they are hiding back in the mud.


But this whopper of a late winter storm will not deter Spring forever. I headed down to the basement where I make an investment in life. I fill flats with potting soil and break open the wondrous paper envelopes with the seeds I ordered by mail a month ago. Today, in a blizzard, I pressed into the dirt the tiny seeds of Matt's Wild Cherry Tomatoes, covered and watered them, and placed them in a plastic bag on the top of the furnace. Now I wait.


Matt's Wild Cherries


In a basement laboratory
 life begins,
 a germ of hope
 in the dead of winter.
 This creature-to-be
 comes from sweet dreams
 and tiny seeds
 which will grow
 into a summer wonder,
 wild and red as blood.
 The thing will take time,
 as all true wishes do,
 by giving them to the earth,
 offering water, light,
 and love, too.
 We wait and wait
 for all our seeds
 to take root, and rise,
 and trust that some small gift
 will return to bless us
 on a cold November morning.

A Deep River Year - 2017

Today would have been my father's 97th birthday. My birthday is tomorrow. Over decades we celebrated these days side by side. I cherished his life, without which mine would not be. Sometimes I open my mouth and hear his voice, or catch a glimpse of him unexpectedly as I walk past a mirror quickly. I do not know exactly what of him is in me.


We were different in many ways, saw the world with different eyes. He carried memories of a humble childhood, formed by a Depression and a World War. He regretted lost dreams that he strived to give to us, his children. He was not fully home in a world of keypads and passwords, texts and electronic messages. But he took care of those he loved with calloused hands and a tongue clenched in his teeth when there was work to do. He loved to touch his grandchildren and hold them, and he often cried with joy. He grew roses by the hundreds, talked to them as he pruned and watered, picked them to give away abundantly as if love were just a thing that anyone could grow.


I remember him on a summer day, standing in his Iowa garden with the sun on his face, a fresh-picked tomato in his hand. He and I would eat them there together, juice running down on our chins and soaking into our white T-shirts. When birthdays end and forever comes, that would be the heaven I would seek, my father's smile and tomato juice on my face.


Birthdays


We mark our journeys
 by days and years,
 our lives marked by scars
 and shaped by songs
 we once sang together
 with the ones
 who went before us.
 Today I hear
 my father's voice,
 his laughter at the story
 whose ending
 he could not remember.
 I walk across the cold, March earth,
 seeking his footprints
 in the fallow garden soil,
 or among the wintered roses
 where his life's blood
 once ran in scarlet and pink,
 the blossoms that he gave away
 in love.
 But today, his birthday,
 there are no footprints out there.
 Instead, I find them
 in the secret place
 where memories never rest,
 but stir us to tears or joy
 or simple gratitude
 as I, too, complete another circle
 around our little star
 on this cosmic bit of dust and rock
 where roses bloom.

A Deep River Year  - 2017

Spring seems so close. This morning we walked past clumps of snowdrops, and a hillside full of green daffodil spears showing off fat buds. Hidden at the base of a stone wall a few shy periwinkles bloomed purple in the grey dawn. And lo and behold, peeking out from the underbrush along our driveway, two brave crocus blossoms seemed to be deciding whether it was time to make their appearance. Yet this cold morning promised a return to Winter. Tomorrow the temperature may not be above freezing and the night may bring some snow. It is the fate of those of us who live in this place that we must learn to endure with patience.


I would rather have Spring. Some day soon, it will be here in all of its glory. But today, out in the garden, I celebrate the kale that has survived our most bitter days, and wonder at the sturdy foxgloves that seek the sunlight as they push through the remnants of melting snow. I want, for myself, such patience, such strength, to make my own Spring through the cold days that may yet lie ahead.


The Thing Called Life


Whatever it is,
that spark of life
at the heart of tender things,
is fierce, a might flame.
We handle it with care.,
fearful of wounding
some fragile creature
that would bloom, or sing,
or bend away from us in fear.
We call it holy,
this life which fills our world,
that makes it breathe and even love.
And we should do this:
protect, nurture, cherish
what lives, even for its little time.
But on a March morning,
we kneel in awe to see
a leaf push through iron earth,
even through snow and ice,
daring us to live so green
when all that is around
would turn us brown.

A Deep River Year 2017

Last week the night was the show--a full moon, a penumbral eclipse, and a nearby comet. It was the full "Snow Moon," called that for hundreds of years by Native Americans because February is traditionally the snowiest month here in the north. It was also called the "Hunger Moon," since the deep snow often led to bare larders and limited resources for nourishment. In some respects, this season is still the time of the "Hunger Moon" here in Connecticut. 
 

We have plenty of food, of course, since we don't depend on stalking prey in the woods or burying potatoes in our root cellars to last us through the winter. But we are hungry, nonetheless. I am weary of the bleak colors of our landscape, the day-after-day of cold and wind. I hunger for color, for the scent of earth, for the sweet song of birds who know it is Spring. I try to be patient. I page through the seed catalogs and send in my orders, dreaming of fat tomatoes and scented sweet peas. I read novels about growing up in idyllic summer days and swimming in cool rivers.

I have to make do with standing out in the winter night and watching the moon shine through bare branches, summoning my blood and dreams like the tide. Last week's show was disappointing: the shadow of earth barely clipped the edge of the full moon, and the comet was indistinguishable. But the "snow moon" by itself held its charms, and days later it is already "waning gibbous" and slipping away toward March. This is promise enough. Perhaps I will stand in the icy driveway some night and imagine the night when the Owl and the Pussycat got married and, after their wedding supper, "hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon, they danced by the light of the moon."    Watch me.










Snow Moon


Far away as it is,
I still see his face,
the old man peering
through a cosmic night,
just as I knew him long ago,
when I, a child of prairies,
stood in silver light
and wondered.
He has watched me
through these years,
and I have marked
my time and seasons,
my waxing and waning,
under his stoic gaze.
And I am still hungry
as those who once endured
the cold of ancient winters
to find something green again
stirring the world to life,
something that make us
rise and dance
in the moon's sweeter light.