THESE ARE THE DAYS

Photo by S. Auberle

Forgive me. For yet more words about
spring. It's just that, after sixteen years
in the southwest, where spring blows in
one day and out the next; where June
can yet see snow in the mountain town
where I live, I have fallen in love. With all
that I'd forgotten about the Midwest spring.
I've been away from my roots too long.

I am in love with what spring does to me,
how it renews me. I become the lover I was
when I was sixteen and everything stretched
out before me. My whole life--endless
possibilities, endless springs, endless passions,
all there ahead of me. There was no sense
of time passing too quickly, no fear lurking
on sleepless nights of winter turning hair
white, taking energy and desire too soon.
Life, like springtime, was electric, turned on
all the time.

Li-Young Lee, one of my favorite poets, says
it perfectly:

"There are days we live as if death were
nowhere in the background, from joy to joy
to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to
blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet
impossible blossom."

These are the days. Forgive me for loving
too fiercely.

- mimi