Spring (aparigraha)
So many people have written so many eloquent things about spring.
Why the need to find my own words?
Two firefighters jog past.
What is important?
What, as Alan Watts asks, is the meaning of
a rock, a pelican, a river?
Like asking which is more important: the earth or the sky?
Important being just another ego trick.
I encourage my daughters to cup between
their hands the stinkbugs they find in the
house, and throw them out the door.
And then I read an essay by a writer who had
a sudden stinkbug infestation that was
so bad, entire rooms were covered.
So when one whirls across the bedroom and
lands on the curtain, I catch that stinkbug in
a napkin and squeeze until its exoskeleton
snaps and its innards squirt out.
Aparigraha means nongrasping
What are you grasping for?
A story to tell? A stranger’s approval?
Is it possible to succeed and not cling?
What does success even mean?
Who am I if I am not grasping for something?
Is it all just a big ego trick?
Grasping because of the fear of what will
happen if we stop grasping?
As if once we decide to stop grasping, we can.
To sit and watch the river and wait until the
chatter quiets down.
To remember to notice the layers, sensations,
sounds.
To remember to follow the breath.
Inevitably we will be bored.
To remember everything is play.
What do you imagine when you hear river?
The stench of a fish kill?
A man with a metal detector?
An old boot?
A muddy shirt twisted like a root?
How this river is part of every other?
How every being is connected to every river?
Rain, sleet, hail. snow, two days in a row,
in the middle of spring.
I put on my space suit
and walk to the auction,
straight out of Werner Herzog’s Stroszek, the
auctioneer in a heated trailer selling off rows
and rows of motorcycles to more people than
you would expect to show up for an outdoor
auction in the middle of a blizzard.
Through the blur of snow, the auction lot, the
pines, the hazy outline of a soaring seagull.
It takes us two hours to dig the car out.
And days for all the snow to melt.
I can always get an amen out of Tom,
mentioning how the birds are singing,
how good the warm sun feels.
The cemetery sign reads NO Fake Flowers May–September.
At the high school, we write our spring haiku
on the sidewalk. One student says that
writing on the sidewalk makes her feel like
she is a kid again at her grandparents’ house.
Another student, in response to all the cheer
about spring writes in very large letters, “I
HATE FLOWERS!”
a very dark cloud
a small woods
layers of decaying leaves
this complexity of curling veins
and cells transformed, missing parts
like fragments of ancient parchment
a thick bed of ghosts
Sleeping with the window open,
the calling of owls and trains.
The first smells of rain,
lightening flashing, the doorbell buzzing in
the thick of night.
I sneak downstairs, heart pounding.
I open the door to find only the wind.
As the tangles of life
inside of seeds
unravel the deepest needs
and emerging from an eternal pause
dots of green that grow into
stems and leaves and flowers and more seeds
and once again we breathe,
as the pelicans soar
as the worms burrow
as the lilacs bloom
as the cottonwood seeds fly
as my mind wanders
as the moon rises
as the river flows
as the Earth spins
as the universe expands.
