The Black Wings of Spring by Sara Wright

Spring on the Wing

Red Willow River’s
waters are rising.
Sea green waves
wash whittled
beaver sticks
against pebble strewn shores.
I bend.
filling a
miniature vessel
with river water
to hold her song:
Water Is Life.

Spring is on the wing.
Bird migrations,
wild winds,
leave – taking,
these are the
elements of seasonal change.
Prayers for rain
may be answered.
Pale green desert rosettes,
toothed scorpion rounds,
purple filigreed ferns,
swelling Cottonwood buds,
all create a chorus of rain chants
sweetening the night.
Blackbirds trill from
tallest branches,
flash crimson
in morning flight.

March is the month
of the seed moon…
I found a soggy bean pod
She held three seeds.
Three old women called out
as I plucked that shriveled husk
from the river’s edge.

Three swollen capsules –
I held them tightly.
Would they
sprout a bean tree
flowing with fragrant flowers,
converse with Iris?
Persephone?
Frog woman?
Three faces of the
Goddess of Spring.
Just in case,
I dug them in.

I have scattered many seeds…
Few have taken root.
This is the way of the desert.
She withholds spring planting,
sometimes for years.
And who am I
to decide what grows
or not?

On the first of March
my passionflower
dropped tender leaves and died.
Twice death has taken her
this vining heart of mine
in exactly the same way
to make her point.

Nature makes no exceptions
for a soul that wonders
too far from her roots.

Caught up by others’ needs
I forgot to tend the garden
of the vining heart of me.
My dreams grew dark.
I suffered from absence –
unable to capture my own attention –
even through poetry.

When plant death intervened
suddenly it dawned, the golden eye…
Her Light grows ever stronger
the moment I turn inward.

Forgive this foolish meandering…
I must turn back to me.

Working Notes:

In Greek mythology Iris was the Goddess of the Rainbow. She represents the daughter aspect of the Goddess manifesting as bridge between Earth and Sky.  Persephone is also a daughter who spends half of her life in the Underworld, returning to the Upperworld when the first crocus blooms in spring. Frogs spend the cold months buried in the earth in a state of suspended animation and only emerge to breed after the Earth thaws and the rains come. According to Gimbutas, the goddess has a frog aspect, and frogs have been associated with Rebirth since Neolithic times. All involve transitions, which are rarely easy. I am struck by these faces of three daughter – like goddesses who also act as bridges from one world to another. Each births something new and each is related to water or the underworld.

Sara is a naturalist, ethologist ( a person who studies animals in their natural habitats) (former) Jungian Pattern Analyst, and a writer. She publishes her work regularly in a number of different venues and is presently living in Northern New Mexico.

Author: Sara Wright

I am a writer and naturalist who lives in a little log cabin by a brook with my two dogs and a ring necked dove named Lily B. I write a naturalist column for a local paper and also publish essays, poems and prose in a number of other publications. View all posts by Sara Wright