Tag: spring
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March 23, 2017
Spring officially began earlier this week. Here, from Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, is the best definition of spring I have encountered: “Spring! And Earth is like a child who has learned many poems by heart.” The forsythia is not blooming quite yet. But it will be. And we will see the poem of spring recited…
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August 4, 2015
When the calendar turned to August, I thought: oh beautiful, golden August–the end of everything, the beginning of everything, the month that moves me the most. I think of August as a golden tunnel, buzzing with cicada song. At the end of the tunnel is the last day of the Minnesota State Fair, the first…
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August 7, 2014
I sat down to write some words about August, and how and why I love the month so much, and then I realized that I could never say it better then Natalie Babbit does in Tuck Everlasting. So, here is August. “The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the…
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May 1, 2014
What I love about spring is how you always have to pay attention. If you turn your back, close your eyes (even for one moment), something has happened. Everything has changed. Some new thing has unfurled. The last few lines of James Wright’s poem “A Blessing” are always in my head these days: “suddenly I…
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May 14, 2013
The older I get, the more impossible spring seems, and the more it surprises me. My brother sent me this photo of a cherry tree in Brookline, Massachusetts. Look at that carpet of blossoms! Like icing on a cake. The definition of “icing on the cake” in the idiom dictionary is: something good that is…
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April 10, 2012
I took this picture of a purple-blossomed tree because I wanted to show it to my mother. Spring was her favorite season. It is when I miss her most. The longer I am in the world, the more convinced I am that we see things best when we see them with somebody else. It is…