March 22, 2012

Sunshine!  After days of cloud, this morning the world is full of spring light, sharp and clear, the vault of the sky is high and pale blue, the trees practically glow with their new green, even the grass is sparkling.  A line of new cane has come up, white like vertical dashes against the darker green, so bright you have to squint.  The resident squirrel is glad to be out as well, running up and down each tree, switching its tail, moving like liquid fur, fast and flowing.  It's so busy being joyful, it doesn't even have a cross word for the cat sunning itself at the end of the driveway.  A pair of cardinal have been shifting branches through the crepe myrtle.  They cannot seem to be still for long, the lady in her dowdy dress, following her flashy mate in his scarlet suit.   The air is still and I can hear several groups of birds, even if I can't see them.  The jays are out, sounding remarkably like crows, only . . . with less volume, the timber of their calls less dark.  I hear one of the pileated woodpecker's jungle cries and its thunking into the dead snag across the ditch.  They sure do hit the trees hard, their skulls must be set up special for that kind of work.

Sometimes a poem, which is probably supposed to be serious, makes me laugh out loud!  It's so startling, or presents such a tilted world image that my brain makes laughter because it has to respond some way, and it chooses joy in that surprise.  This is one of those poems from Verse Daily.  When I first read it, I thought it said  . . . The Universe is a Madman, my brain is still sleepy I guess or in one of its more dyslexic phases.  Yet even when I read it again, and correctly, it made about as much sense as the first rendition.

The Universe is a Madam 

Your star-marked hair is set
with laissez-faire,
but you blink and comets
hightail it. All my life I've tried
to be like you. All my life
I've failed. What do I have to do
to match your husk-voice, your red-
light-pulse?You with your
Spin inside me, worlds. Your
Today a fire appears, today one blackens.
Some nights I walk through
my silent neighborhood with my head down.
I'm giving you a chance, Universe.
Pluck me up. Scold me. Tell me
I'm failing, that the clients
have complained. Then give me
one more chance. Go, I'd like to
hear you say, supernovas churning
inside your gaping mouth,
and make me proud.

Catherine Pierce

Okay, so I have never wanted to be the Universe, but even while reading it I completely understood the impulse, the desire to encompass everything, to be full with stars and worlds!  To be able to know more than I do, to be responsible for making things, for creating so much, for living large in this moment and wanting to share it.  I want star-marked hair set with laissez-faire, heck, I will settle for star-marked!  Wouldn't that be something, walking around at night, hair trailing stars like comets, glowing!  I want to glow in the daytime too, like the skin of the crepe myrtle tree, golden and smooth, with enough wrinkles to be interesting!  Oh, me too, I want to make the universe proud!