220302 letters from the swamp, #5

 Mar. 2 

seasons

how impossible

(implausible)

when the snow falls around you 

the sun is a pale star

fields are cloaked in white

and trees are 

black naked limbs reaching

and it is cold and you hold to your breast the coat and wrap to protect 

yourself,

to remember the summer

hot and the sky too bright to look at

the field green and lush the trees

thick with leaves

you could go outside naked in the sun

and close your eyes 

open your arms

free of the clutch in your breast.

conversely how impossible

when you are hot and bare

lying in the grass

and the forest is green and crowded on the hill,

to remember the winter the cold naked trees

and the world hidden under the blind blanket of snow.

how impossible

absolutely

when you are living in the swamp with the cackling witch 

where the dead logs are shrouded in a fur of moss 

and nothing looks the same

where the light itself is fermented and green

where depression is the air you breathe

damp fecund moss-covered

and you the witch,

to remember solid earth underfoot 

and the sun and being normal.

impossible

when you feel happy and unafraid to go to bed

trusting that tomorrow will come 

having faith in the goodness of life in friends and lover

when sunshine and rain are just the weather

when you can do, act as action, an enormity of normality,

to remember that there was ever a swamp at all.

      

Mumma Yaga

220301

Grapes, June 2021