So already, latest April and earliest May, for me, together comprise the most beautiful part of spring--maybe because the beauty of this period is the most ephemeral. But that last "maybe" may miss the experiential point. It's the abundance of breathtaking pastels that makes latest April and earliest May exceedingly and uniquely beautiful. Those pale, delicate colors create a seasonal softness, especially when combined with gentle breezes and mild temperatures.
Yes, these pastels fade or fall to the ground when the great seasonal leafing out begins, just as Robert Frost says in "Nothing Gold Can Stay"*:
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf. . . .
But how breath-taking they are, how much they gladden our hearts, has nothing to do with how briefly they stay. Those of us who ritually undertake spring cleaning as a seasonal imperative need to march ourselves outdoors every day even just briefly so we don't miss what will lift our spirits even more than dust-free, shining baseboards.
April is the perfect month for National Poetry Month. Eliot and Whitman practically made sure of it with their April references in "The Wasteland" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." Then there's poetry's unique ability not only to nail--get right--the ephemeral quality of early spring, but to nail it down so it remains permanently ephemeral. Poetry is like the girl in the 2024 official National Poetry Month poster**: she will ever be mid-air and mid-ecstasy.
For my part, I've gotten myself outside so as not to miss out on this season's nearly daily changes. A few weeks back, before the time of pastel flowerings, I was on the lookout for the first of the skunk cabbage, especially because I'd recently read and loved Mary Oliver's "Skunk Cabbage."***
Oliver's poem conveys the muscular monstrousness of skunk cabbage: it's "brash" and "turnip-hearted"; its smell is "lurid"; its "rough/ green caves" are "Appalling." Its emergence expresses "daring" and "brawn," not "longing" and "tenderness": it rises out of the "chilling mud," reminding us that "the secret name/ of every death is life again"--but, initially, life that perceptibly, undeniably feeds on and reeks of the death that precedes it. Encountering it, we feel repelled and compelled simultaneously.
One of the members of my poetry reading group expressed frustration with skunk cabbage. It's so abundant--and so useless, she explained: we can't make anything out of it. But to my mind, it's use lies in its offering early proof that life will again grow out of widespread cold muck and decay that have begun to seem permanent.
I appreciate Oliver's elevating humble skunk cabbage in a poem of praise that reminds us that "What blazes the trail [to the more "pleasing" expressions of seasonal rebirth] is not necessarily pretty." Generally, I'm grateful for good poems such as Oliver's because of what they hold and keep holding for whenever we want to return to them.
In the spirit of the power of poems to capture, affirm, and preserve, I will now take this blog post out of the springtime woods of Greater Boston and place it on the banks of the Androscoggin River in mid-autumn. But its gratitude for poetry and trust in poetry's power will remain.
The reason for this abrupt shift: were he still alive, my father would have been looking to celebrate his ninety-eighth birthday on Saturday, April 27. "Androscoggin Riverwalk" is a poem that I believe captures and preserves his interests and sensibilities and his engaged relationship with the world. I
wrote it originally in response to a poetry prompt that required me to
write directly to a person about a place. I knew immediately I wanted to
write to my father, who'd died two years earlier, about the walk along,
across, and then back along the Androscoggin River in Brunswick, Maine.
You would have loved the riverwalk.
You would have paused to watch
The Androscoggin flowing past
Sloping slabs of gray stone
Sprouting pine and spruce.
But the narrow swinging bridge
That spanned the river,
Offering pedestrian transit
From bank to bank,
Really would have interested you.
Gingerly, you would have stepped
onto it,
Then, gaining trust in it and you,
Continued across it,
Stopping just beyond its far end
To pore over the placard
That told its story:
For decades, French-Canadians
Had moved across Le Petit Pont
Going to and from Cabot Mill,
And church and school,
All on the Brunswick side.
Nothing moved you more
Than tales of humble people
Who, sensing opportunity
For their children and themselves,
Left beloved homes behind
For promising new ones.
The faces of the migrants,
Earnest in the placard photos,
Would have stayed with you
As you headed downhill
From Topsham Heights--
Until a hydroelectric plant
Came into view, compelling
An impromptu discourse
On the likely ties
Among river, plant, and mill:
Chance encounters
With functioning vestiges
Of thriving industrial times
Often drew from you
Specialized knowledge
I hadn’t known you had.
Your exposition ended,
You would have set off
For the downstream bridge,
Pausing for a final time
To wonder at the bright-hued flags
Strung across a nearby prayer garden,
And to ask what a prayer wheel was,
And then continuing on,
Your thoughts now turned
Toward home and lunch.
An avid golf and tennis player, my father loved spring; it was the declining light in fall that got him down--and made him look forward to the winter solstice as the signal of the sure if slow return of warmth and light over the weeks and months ahead.
Thank you for reading this poem about him--and the rest of this post. And may you enjoy this miraculous season, the poems it writes, and the remainder of National Poetry Month.
* Frost, R. (n.d.). Nothing gold can stay. poets.org: Academy of American poets. https://poets.org/poem/nothing-gold-can-stay
** The American Academy of Poets creates this annual official poster.
*** Oliver, M. (n.d.). Skunk cabbage. Famous poets and poems.com. http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/mary_oliver/poems/15874
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