Big Sigh in Springtime
It’s complicated, you know: being alive, being outside
at the neighbors’ on one of the first warm nights in half a year,
and there’s a doll-sized lamb frolicking around the porch,
content to be free and not kicked by its mother, almost
too precious to look at. Before we walk the short distance
home, we hear the season’s first peeper: lone screech in the dark
in the beaver pond, waiting in exile until the hatching
of comrades. We walk back with our bowl and our spoons
and the sky all around us: we’re pooped. We’re in love
with each other and our dreams and exhausted.
There’s a car to be fixed and we need a new truck
that can handle the ice. There’s not a hint of crocus
for miles, this cold hilltop bowl unwilling to surrender
her wintertime ways. It’s been nearly a week
since I showered and I still have to choose how we’ll package
our oils to sell at our markets and tomorrow I’ll train
for another small job. I think a lot of people think all I do
is wear dresses outside and eat fruit, and partly
that’s true, but also: I’m tired. Spring’s about to burst
and I’ve yet to finish Middlemarch. I remain widely
unpublished and my nails are like daggers torn sharp
with my teeth. I can’t yet picture where our life
will be planted and I can’t paint my landscape
before the canvas is stretched. My brain’s composed
of colors, painted partly by him and embellished
by me. My grammar’s intuitive, just like the rest of me–
going on gut, gunning on gut, slamming the breaks,
quick-catching a view of what whizzes by while I drive.
I like talking walks and I always walk quickly,
though I’m trying to enjoy walking slower, looking up
and around instead of just down at the mullein
and mushrooms popping up everywhere. These days I’m holding
out hope that my sister moves east and on Thursday I head
to the city by bus to say hi to the Whitney, the subway,
the blossoms, my friends. It’s nice to go south yet painful
to leave my love in the house, sleeping alone in our bed
made for two, sitting alone at the small kitchen table where we rest
all our meals. When I said it’s complicated, being alive, being
outside at night surrounded by grass greening back
to its best summer self, what I meant was I’m tired
and I’m happy and I’m healing and I’m growing
like ginseng–I’m taking my time. In these days before
children, all my time is my own and I covet that time,
sinking deep in the couch with a thick hunk of literature,
putting on earrings just to go down for dinner.
panache, perhaps 