Interfaith Minister, Writer, Poet, Teacher
The sun is a fairweather friend.
We practice Thanksgiving as the nights lengthen to remind us that winter’s not forever,
Spring is damn near guaranteed (eventually),
and death is a beginning, not an end.
But darkness enfolds us, encroaches further into the productive day.
We are tempted to rise and roost with the chickens,
but then the earth tilts just too far,
Day gets just too short,
Night gets just too long,
Until we punch through the curtain,
embrace the night,
and write poetry in the dark.
Gaia knocks at the window.
I sit at my desk and stare into a screen of
chicken scratch letters on a snowy field.
The keys feel like river pebbles rubbed smooth from eons of erosion.
Beside me is a maple bowl turned by a local craftsman which holds my crystals —
Tree agate, Bloodstone, Selenite, Snowflake Obsidian,
Labradorite, Carnelian, Sodalite —
the vibrations of a million years of terrestrial pressure collecting dust while I
focus on work that will be forgotten tomorrow.
I rub my hand across the laminated desk top and yearn for wood.
I will get no splinters tonight.
I have not seen the moon and could not tell you if it is
full or new, waxing or waning.
Knowing that would have been the work of my ancestors,
those noble souls who built Stonehenge
and sang songs to Brighid
and marked their bodies with triple spirals
to honor maiden, mother, crone.
I sit at my desk, my back to the window,
and click-clack the chicken scratch.
Gaia knocks with a ping on the glass.
I respond without looking,
“We need the rain.”
First the daffodils.
Then the tulips. Red, yellow, pink.
Lettuce is crisping in the cool morning air.
The cucumber magnolia sends out tiny shoots at the end of each branch.
The sycamores will make a late grand entrance, but until then there are the oaks, hackberries, and redbuds getting back to business.
The cedar and cyprus have held a green vigil through the dark death of winter, but now they catch the fever and dance a little perkier in the breeze.
The pine will start new quills to write the lovesongs of robins and chickadees, bluejays and cardinals.
Lavender, oregano, and mint are suddenly alive again.
Rosemary dresses up and puts on her perfume.
Hyacinths are bursting blue.
The wheel will turn and spring will
become summer
become fall
become winter.
But today is spring,
And I am bursting blue.
If George W. Bush practiced the politics of faith,
And Barack Obama practices the politics of hope,
I wonder what the politics of love will look like?
The greatest of these, I have no doubt.
Deb Moore 