Oppressive winter sinks my spirit in a pit of apathy – a stilled, frozen depth of indifference; I just want to hibernate. In spring, however, my flesh sings alive, I waken to renewed love of this world our home; I open to delight.
For Friday Writings #213 at Poets and Storytellers United, we are invited to include any or all of these sets of words: 1. flesh/spirit, 2. spring/winter, 5. love/indifference.
I don’t understand Groundhog Day, not being American. I thought, because of the movie, it meant the same things happening over and over: one day endlessly repeated. But Frank Tassone, using it as a poetry prompt at dVerse, tells us it’s the day when the behaviour of a groundhog is used to forecast either coming Spring or a return to Winter.
Puzzling. Spring always arrives, doesn't it, sooner later?
But then he connects it to the Christian holiday, Candlemass, which he tells us is about anticipating when to plant seeds. Aha! so the ‘sooner or later’ of Spring’s arrival is the point.
I look up Candlemass for more detail. Instead, Google takes me straight to an account of the Pagan festival of Imbolc.
Ah yes, same date. Now I get it! (Sometimes one has to dive a little deeper.)
That, however, is not quite the end of the story. Not for me. Here in Australia we have just come out the other side of a heatwave – not the only one we’ll get this Summer, I fully expect. Here, we are six months away from Imbolc. We have been celebrating Lughnasadh (aka Lammas). Well, some of us have. For Pagans, it’s a time to be thankful for the bounty of nature and the gifts from agriculture.
If we were to have a Groundhog Day here, it couldn’t be now.
late summer –
we celebrate with bread
the good harvest
(Breaking all sorts of purist rules.)
I must go down to
the sea again! all I ask
is a tiny boat
with two paddles, sunlight on
the waves, and thou beside me
(Apologies to John Masefield and Omar Khayyam)
Prompt 'boat' at Tanka Poets On Site (fb).
solitude –
the luxury of time
all alone
in my own roving mind’s
delicious freedom
Prompt 'solitude' at Tanka Poets On Site.
Also sharing these two at Poets and Storytellers United for FridayWritings #212: Luxury. Both describe (some of) my ideas of luxury, though only the second uses the word.
