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Spring Arrives Today

by Van

Spring: a Spiritual Biography of the Season, edited by Gary Schmidt & Susan M. Felch, groups essays, poems, and Shaker hymns in a five part (Stirrings, Awakenings, Growth, Pilgrimage, and Dance) celebration of Spring.

The editors write: “Spring is the season that simultaneously calls us to celebration and to a sober sense of gratitude for the time that we have been given. The grace of renewal should lead to gratitude for the newness, and it should lead to an acute awareness of our need for renewal.”

The essayists and poets include Jane Kenyon, Donald Hall, Noel Perrin, Annie Dillard, and many others. This book is one of a series of four Spiritual Biographies of the Seasons.

To read Jane Kenyon’s spring poem, Mud Season, click on Read More

Mud Season

Here in purgatory bare ground
is visible, except in shady places
where snow prevails.

Still, each day sees
the restoration of another animal:
a sparrow, just now a sleepy wasp;
and, at twilight, the skunk
pokes out of the den,
anxious for mates and meals….

On the floor of the woodshed
the coldest imaginable ooze,
and soon the first shoots
of asparagus will rise,
the fingers of Lazarus….

Earth’s open wounds – where the plow
gouged the ground last November –
must be smoothed; some sown
with seed, and all forgotten.

Now the nuthatch spurns the suet,
resuming its diet of flies, and the mesh
bag, limp and greasy, might be taken
down.

Beside the porch step
the crocus prepares an exaltation
of purple, but for the moment holds its tongue….

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