April 11, 2012

The mad mockingbird is up, now, in the dark!  Who is he trying to impress?  Every lady bird is asleep, head tucked under wing, perched safe in the oh so early morning.  There is nothing to crow about in this hour, it's empty, the street, the yard, the sky, black and clouded over so even the stars sleep.  Yet he is out there singing as if there were flocks of females for his audience.  I wish him luck.  He reminds me of the blue jays, whose harsh voice and raucous song does not seem it would inspire romance at all, more like the drunken suitor bawling out bad opera in the middle of the night beneath his lady love's window.  Still, it must work; every year there are baby blue jays!

The news talked about how such an early spring as the country seems to be having makes the farmer's nervous for early blooming things like apples, and apricots, and for tender shoots like asparagus.  If the frost comes again, it could take a whole year's worth of crop in a few nights.  Here, I don't think we have to worry about that, it's spring and there's not going to be any frost this late, but I can see how in more northern places that would be such an uncertainty.  They still could have snow up there, they have sleet, and freezing rain, but their spring is slower as well, so perhaps it is a balancing act that you can only endure until you're sure.  It's got to be a different experience to depend so deeply on something out of your control.

Gather    

Some springs, apples bloom too soon.
The trees have grown here for a hundred years, and are still quick
to trust that the frost has finished. Some springs,
pink petals turn black. Those summers, the orchards are empty
and quiet. No reason for the bees to come.

Other summers, red apples beat hearty in the trees, golden apples
glow in sheer skin. Their weight breaks branches,
the ground rolls with apples, and you fall in fruit.

You could say, I have been foolish. You could say, I have been fooled.
You could say, Some years, there are apples.

Rose Mclarney

I guess that's what the people who grow those tender crops that feed us have to say, Some years, there are apples.  If you didn't look at it that way, you couldn't trust your life to something so chancy, it would not be possible to take the frost-killed years as part of the whole, as just what comes.  You would get another life, auto mechanic, physicist, grade school teacher, though, if truth be told, there are insecurities in those lines of work as well, any line of work.  Nothing much is certain, no one escapes alive, and we all just put one foot in front of the other and try to deal with what is before us.  I hope this year, there are apples for everyone.