spring haiku

Hardwick, VT, Sign of Spring #6

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

…. kid skis on snow and field.

Easter afternoon, we skied on snow slushy in open areas, in the woods icy and pine-needle-strewn, pausing to breathe after the vigorous workout. Little streams ran along the trail. My friend remarked on the understory greening as our skis scraped along.

At the top of Elinor’s Hill, we stood for a moment, deciding which way to travel, and I remembered the winter our friend skiing alone fell on this long hill, breaking his leg, and lay on the snow, waiting. Now, in the warmth, we skied without gloves, my daughters sillily lying in the middle of the trail, dramatically waving their skis over their heads. Easter, and no one else was around, save for a few stray folks.

Later, I spoke with these friends, two thousand long miles away, and I realized they must have called us when we stood in the snow and open field at the top of that field, remarking, Remember when….?

The snow still claims more than it doesn’t. Later that night, under a nearly full moon, my daughter returned from a moonlight walk, exclaiming at the cold.

Buying leeks
and walking home
under the bare trees.

— Buson

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Craftsbury, Vermont

 

Working

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

When my girls were little, we played Signs of Spring for weeks, enthusiastically spying the first unfolding daffodil bloom, robins’ beaks clamped around strands of nesting material, tiny dresses flapping on clotheslines.

On the evening shift now, my 18-year-old came home last night and said a goose wandered into the nursing home. With another woman, they lured the wild, spitting creature through the open door with bread.

Spring tidings in Greensboro, Vermont?

Laughing, my daughter digs into her salad, a pile of fresh greens piled high with salty feta and kalamata olives, already thinking of other things. She’s sparkling, this young woman.

spring begins
as it has deigned to do
for a thousand ages

– Issa

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Montpelier, Vermont

Coltsfoot Dreams

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 5 Comments

February 4 always marks the return of light to me, and, from my windows, the skies are clear today. February 4, 18 years ago, was my first day as a mother. My baby had been born in the deep of night, shortly before midnight, and the 4th was filled with radiance.

What’s 18 years over the span of millennia? Not even a heartbeat, perhaps, but for us, these years have been mightily full. Her younger sister and friends made tissue paper flowers and decorated the house with balloons and streamers, for this young woman who spent much of her childhood drawing or photographing blossoms.

It seemed fitting, then, that she returned from her birthday dinner with an exquisite bouquet from her boyfriend. The mistakes I’ve made as a parent could fill six novels. Yet here’s my tall beautiful daughter, her hands full of flowers, stepping into a world we’re offering her rife with political chaos, shot through with what should be acknowledged as unbridled vice, on a planet severely ailing.

And yet: flowers. The 11-year-olds and I stayed up late last night in front of the wood stove. Perhaps for no other reason than to delay bedtime, they began knitting with me. Kids and flowers: wily and beautiful.

February means spring isn’t that far in the offing, and spring means coltsfoot, those tiny gold blossoms thrusting up through the hardest and ugliest of roadsides, claiming their territory.

Our life here on earth:
to what shall we compare it?
Is it not like a rowboat
departing at daybreak,
leaving no trace of us in its wake?

― Takaha Shugyo, translated by Michael R. Burch

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