Bride’s Day – In mist, in song, in bud.

Bride’s day has come in through a veil of drizzle. The birds don’t care, the buds don’t care, and if it wasn’t for the slip and slide of our muddy fields, I wouldn’t care either. The winter has been short with only a handful of freezing days. The  saplings in the new, and very small, woodland having been in bud since before the solstice, and spring has felt imminent for a while. After several months of distractions, along with the car-crashery of our world becoming a little more heartless and the accompanying sensations of powerlessness, the urge to sow, prep, plant, watch, walk, engage and reassemble has finally returned.

I’m going to be a tree, a blade of grass, a wild blackberry whip and let spring have her way with me: come into bud even if there’s no sunshine right now; even if the mud is cold and the sun still low. There are new songs on my playlist, unopened books to be read and seeds to be sown.

January, you were a fine month to sleepwalk through, a quiet, unlit space full of morning stars and freezing fingers, a good time to explore the hidden rooms within, but I’m missing the long views from my window and the spark of spring light that makes anything possible. So if you need me I’ll be out across the fields, watching for Persephone as she brings in the spring; in mist, in song, in bud.

Demeter.

Where I lived – winter and hard earth. I sat in my cold stone room
choosing tough words, granite, flint,

to break the ice. My broken heart – I tried that, but it skimmed,
flat, over the frozen lake.

She came from a long, long way,
but I saw her at last, walking,
my daughter, my girl, across the fields,

In bare feet, bringing all spring’s flowers
to her mother’s house. I swear
the air softened and warmed as she moved,

the blue sky smiling, none too soon,
with the small shy mouth of a new moon.’

 By Carol Ann Duffy.