poetry

May Day

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

I have my winter tires switched for summers. In the garage, I ask the owner how he is. He leans back in his chair, shrugs, and lifts his hands.

I know, I say, but it’s May. It’s spring.

He shrugs again. Which sums up where we are now.

May reminds us why we live in Vermont. The world turns gorgeously green. My daughters and I walk and walk, discovering trilliums, rushing streams, the tiniest of leaves. In a world where we’re all worn down, spring’s beauty reminds us that the world spins on.

From Diana Whitney’s lovely new anthology, You Don’t Have to be Everything:

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Wild Friends

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

While waiting for my daughter to finish soccer practice, I wandered down the road and discovered three geese gliding through a wetland. I stood at the wetlands’ edge for the longest time, simply watching, as if by observing I can absorb some of their quiet certainty.

Everyday in Vermont, a few more strokes of green, a little more color.

“Empathy is more than putting yourself in someone else’s shoes; it’s using your power to fight for changes that don’t directly benefit you.”

— Tessa Miller, What Doesn’t Kill You: A Life With Chronic Illness — Lessons From a Body in Revolt

Vermont Spring Palette

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

I leave work in the middle of the day, to take my daughter from here to there. A downpour has suddenly stopped, and sunlight sparkles over the wet world. We drive with the windows and sunroof open, the breeze blowing in. Although both girls have had Covid, and I’m vaccinated, we’re wearing masks. When won’t we be wearing masks?

The girls talk about classes, and I tune out, listening to their voices. We pass clumps of golden daffodils. On my way back to work, I drive through fields of green so brilliant I blink.

All around me, the human world feels fraught these days with chaos, both self-inflicted and not. Meanwhile, the earth pushes alive with spring. In the evening, walking up a dirt road, I look back at my daughters beneath an enormous maple, its branches still bare. Behind us, the mountains hold a deep blue. The peepers chorus, and the red-wing blackbirds sing sweetly.

It may yet snow again this week. Meanwhile, spring.

We walk up the road and down through the cedar forest, where the path is black earth. We linger so long that we walk home in the dark.

“Walking . . . is how the body measures itself against the earth.” 

— Rebecca Solnit

Somewhere in Snowy Spring….

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Through a few inches of snow, I follow stone steps down to nearby Lake Caspian, winding around a cedar-shingled house, holding a railing someone has taken the care to build, baluster by baluster.

The homeowner wants to build a tiny boathouse by the shoreline. While I listen to his plans, I eye the lake visible beneath the bent that hang over the lake. Although I’m wearing my winter coat, I imagine wading in, sweeping my fingers in the cold water.

The few of us stand among white birches, sharing names and stories. Because this is Vermont, we talk about the weather, the need for precipitation, and how everyone’s wood pile is faring. We make our way back up the hill, still talking.

A robin, in a crazed songbird rush, swoops by, nearing clipping one woman’s ear. She laughs.

It’s Saturday. Later that afternoon, I’ll stand in my driveway, talking with my friend about the fat list of things that worry and stress us. But for this half hour or so, I visit with acquaintances and strangers, talking about the area’s barns, how these great structures were built with care. Some remain; some are simply memories.

For listening recommendations, my father passed along this link to This American Life‘s Three Miles.

Short Visit

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 11 Comments

A retired man shows up at my job, looking for a little info and then stays to talk, sitting in a chair while I lean against one of the cement posts that hold up the ceiling, and the building overhead.

A former landscaper, he’s survived numerous joint replacements, an overseas war as a young man, and he’s holding cancer at bay, for now. He’ll succumb to the cancer, he says, at some point. But for now, he tells me how much he savors that first slurp of hot tea every morning.

I have plenty to do, but for that time, I might as well, really, have nothing else to do. He tells me about a double blossom primrose flowering in his garden. Another spring, he says.

Snow expected today; that’s Vermont spring, too.

Mighty Wildflowers

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 8 Comments

Blue squill reappears in our front yard and over the hill behind our house, in the thickets of wild raspberry canes — tiny flowers that sprinkle color in our landscape that is otherwise brown dirt and gray mountain.

In the rough patches of roadsides and rocky ditches, coltsfoot springs up. Along the brick school gymnasium, I discover blooming dandelions.

These tiny flowers, some no larger than my thumbnail, are mighty tough. There’s a lesson here, I know, as I crouch in that tangle of thorny vines, admiring a clump of starflowers. That lesson might be as simple as the determination of the world’s beauty. Who planted these flowers, I don’t know. But every spring I’m grateful for that gardener who lived here and who so loved these spring gems.

The first of a year’s abundance of dandelions

in this single kernel of bright yellow

dropped on our path by the sun, sensing

that we might need some marker to help us

find our way through life…

— Ted Kooser, “Dandelion”