An old friend from years ago sends me a message. She’s persistent, wearing down through my imposed or self-imposed hermitage, whatever this thing is I’m doing, and I drive myself out on muddy roads. She has such a lovely little girl, I’m smitten immediately. I sit down on the floor and chat up the child, and eventually remember my good friend and how much I enjoy her world. She’s funny, with boundless good will and cleverness, in a life that’s had her share of lemons.

End of March, nearly Easter, my perennials spike up further every day. How the earth desires green. I’m far enough along now in my own life that I know the cupboard of my mortal life will always hold certain grooves and scars, its beaten shape, the way the material in my life has shaped me. Aren’t we all that way, though? Maybe this is why spring is the dearest of seasons, that from mud and ice emerge tender shoots, the improbable made manifest every year.

Beginning

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.   
The dark wheat listens.
Be still.
Now.
There they are, the moon’s young, trying
Their wings.
Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow
Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone
Wholly, into the air.
I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe
Or move.
I listen.
The wheat leans back toward its own darkness,
And I lean toward mine.

— James Wright