spring green...

"Our task is to stamp this provisional, perishing earth into ourselves so deeply, so passionately, that its being (arises), invisibly, in us."  Rainer Maria Rilke

What a miracle spring-green is. When younger, I was always on my way to "somewhere"  that was more important than spring-green. This year my destination seems to be more Now -- walking now, feeling now, observing now. Everywhere, my eyes are taken with all the emerging every-things.

Looking out these windows the color green, except for the lake, fills the landscape.  As common as it is, how can I be enchanted? Yet, I rather am. Recently, I headed north from Arizona as did my friends the migratory birds. There is no green in my front or back yard in Tucson. The desert, having it's own unique beauty, is speckled with grey, purple-brown sand dotted with sun-worn cactus, sage and tumbleweed which is not the iridescent green we know here. When looking up at the night sky there are no young sprouts of grass on the moonscape, no early morning sun inching, feeling its way, caressing the newest leaf as it unfurls its sails. Nor does green exist on any other planet we humans know.

A decade ago, I also had a little help wakening my spring-green eyes. After an accident, I was stopped for many months. Everything moved slowly in me and by me. I wrote in my journal, "My new passenger status and cane offer me countless early-green encounters.  Looking out the car window a lacy pattern of new maples and poplar leaves dance their iridescences in a backdrop of blue. Grasses and new shoots pass me in slow motion. Looking to the top of the hill, in the distance,  cows are munching their fill of this rich spectacle. Lazily I wonder, "Will it give them a stomach ache?"

My journal continues, "Imagine, I have to wait another whole year before I see these exquisite sights, again. A thought stings me, death now rides a little closer on my left shoulder. There are no guarantees. I nearly missed this spring. And no matter how much belief I have in life continuing in some form, I also believe the texture, the solidity of my feet in this new spring-ness and the tender slide of the young poplar leaf velvet-ing my fingers may not be the same on the 'other side'."

Although this morning, a decade later, I try to describe what I see out my window here, I still can't. I go to the poets, they can't. So I won't. I can only take a deep breath, look and passionately desire another spring with it's iridescent green.  Like Rilke, maybe my task is stamping this earth into my being, so it's beauty and mystery can arise within. 

photo source:  Sunny Flowers, www.Fotolia.com