03.20.21

“You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot keep spring from coming.” –Pablo Neruda

I write this from my hospital bed in Kalispell. Having suffered a stroke, I am into the second week here, with hopes I’ll be discharged to outpatient care this upcoming Friday. Rita has kept me in flowers as I make my way through the days. On the fifth day, I wrote in my journal that her daffodils showed off their golden ruffles, and Don told me that he heard a robin’s song down at the lake. He keeps me company by day, and at night, when I pull up the white cotton blankets from the foot of my skinny hospital bed, it feels like I’m covering myself with the love, prayers and best wishes of so many people who love and care about me, and about Don. It truly comforts me to snuggle in under all that warmth as I drift off at the end of a long day, hoping for a good tomorrow.

And, here it is, spring, once again. Just like it was promised to us. It always holds the promise of new beginnings and new growth, a time of transformation. I would like to be like the bear, sharpening my claws against the silence of the trees, knowing always how to love this world.

Spring, by Mary Oliver

Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring 

down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring

I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue

like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:

how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else

my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her~
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.