Spring dries into summer, and the hawthorns are having a fine year. White and woolly on the greening ground, they could be upright celestial sheep. Beautiful as they are, though, they’re not for me. My heart belongs to their cousin; and her time is the start of spring, when weakness and responsibility kept me from writing.
May 31, 2023·edited May 31, 2023Liked by FFatalism
Good to read your words again. The connection here between the budding time and the thought of death took me back to Larkin's The Trees, which has been on my mind this spring.
Thank you for this meditation. “Plant languages”: I love that. The flowering of trees on our street is one of the magical parts of spring: for a week or two, the air is so beautifully perfumed. And then it’s over, as the weather warms up (which it did in a big hurry this spring. May felt like July).
I think about mortality too, and usually the thought is not overwhelming, unless it’s 3am, then everything is. Interesting, I never questioned how old you are just from reading your writing. :-)
not sure if we have much blackthorn around here. in this part of the lake valley, the bellwethers of spring are the snowdrops: also white flowers, and the first brave ones to try their luck—Persephone's pale fingers tentatively reaching up from the underworld, testing the air to feel the promise of her time in the sun.
that time aboveground is always shorter than she'd hoped but longer than she thought, i've heard.
It is so long since I experienced an English spring, blackthorn and the rest. Here in the antipodes we have sudden springs which as with the dawn and dusk happen to quickly for most locals to stand and gaze. We do have an old English oak, water stressed, dying and yearning for home. I spend time in its company every 'spring' as within two weeks it is forced, like rhubarb, to do its thing too quick. (A metaphor for the Modern World and our human place within it - 'Keep up!! It (what???) demands' and we its slaves struggle more and more to 'live' our non lives . . .
Obviously you've triggered something in me - this (to use a phrase so overused it has slipped its moorings) unseasonably warm early winter's day here in New Zealand.
Very moving; l have watched and meditated on the blackthorn blossom for years, and it’s comforting to view it through a sympathetic consciousness. May you enjoy many more spring mornings.
Good to read your words again. The connection here between the budding time and the thought of death took me back to Larkin's The Trees, which has been on my mind this spring.
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
Thank you for this meditation. “Plant languages”: I love that. The flowering of trees on our street is one of the magical parts of spring: for a week or two, the air is so beautifully perfumed. And then it’s over, as the weather warms up (which it did in a big hurry this spring. May felt like July).
I think about mortality too, and usually the thought is not overwhelming, unless it’s 3am, then everything is. Interesting, I never questioned how old you are just from reading your writing. :-)
not sure if we have much blackthorn around here. in this part of the lake valley, the bellwethers of spring are the snowdrops: also white flowers, and the first brave ones to try their luck—Persephone's pale fingers tentatively reaching up from the underworld, testing the air to feel the promise of her time in the sun.
that time aboveground is always shorter than she'd hoped but longer than she thought, i've heard.
Beautiful
It is so long since I experienced an English spring, blackthorn and the rest. Here in the antipodes we have sudden springs which as with the dawn and dusk happen to quickly for most locals to stand and gaze. We do have an old English oak, water stressed, dying and yearning for home. I spend time in its company every 'spring' as within two weeks it is forced, like rhubarb, to do its thing too quick. (A metaphor for the Modern World and our human place within it - 'Keep up!! It (what???) demands' and we its slaves struggle more and more to 'live' our non lives . . .
Obviously you've triggered something in me - this (to use a phrase so overused it has slipped its moorings) unseasonably warm early winter's day here in New Zealand.
Thank you
Good to have you back!
Very moving; l have watched and meditated on the blackthorn blossom for years, and it’s comforting to view it through a sympathetic consciousness. May you enjoy many more spring mornings.
Beautiful. I will never see Blackthorn the same way again.
It’s good to hear from you, hope you are writing more soon!