Michigan's Way

On the breath of dawn cardinals and sparrows hang notes like streamers in rose-gold air. A red-bellied woodpecker churrs his throaty trill a little off in the distance. There is a stir – an activated murmuring of life and it feels so very much like opening. Whoever is me is now moving more like blood or creek or sap.

After a few moments of mosaic sunrise, gray rolls over any hints of spring. Later: snow – rain – snow.

It's colder than usual in the greenhouse. Most of us leave our sweatshirts on as we fill dirt, plant, tag and pull flats off the conveyer belt. Walking the flats and baskets to their spots in the greenhouses requires great physical exertion and yet, shivers. These little green spirits grow because we said so! The “runner” job at the greenhouse is my favorite. Hundreds of times over I grab the flats or the baskets off the belt and carry them to a certain spot on the greenhouse floor. If they are hanging baskets I carry 4 in each hand and bend down to line them up 10 or 12 across. If they are flats, I carry one in each hand. Sometimes the distance from the belt to the resting spot is 20-30 feet. Sometimes it is the entire length of the greenhouse aisle. Muscles mound under my skin and I can feel all my parts working together to accomplish something. The gals yell from the filler to check on me. I always smile and wave.

Winter as a teacher. Who would I be if the temperature was always 73 and a little sunny? Michigan's way always leaves a mark. Could I love spring so desperately if it wasn't a spectacular chisel cutting the dormant from winter's tomb? There used to be these verses I loved . . . these poets filled with magic and tragedy. Now there is January and April and October. There are leftover leaves covering new beginnings. There is a hint of pine-tinged woodsmoke greeting the open door. And there is me, doing this sort of twisty dance between loneliness and complacency and what feels like ridiculously naive hope. That's too simplistic, of course. But it is one way to color in the lines.

Another way to shade and shape is the writing. There is a sense of thinness when it doesn't arrive. Waking and walking and working – if not noticing and recording the smallest bend of sunlight or the faintest hint of damp earth, then why? Why collect and carry a million details of an infinite story? Every day, despite the weather or illness or the general busyness and grind of American life, there is an awareness collected – jots pushed along in a stream of existence. A telling burns inside but I cannot coax the alchemy of creation forward.

An opossum the size of a large raccoon lumbers across the backyard fence line. In the morning fog it isn't easy to keep track of it and soon it disappears into a familiar grayness. K. says we need to find someone to get rid of it. He knows I won't allow that; I'm not sure what the point is in testing me so early in the morning. On my day off, new glasses, meet with a contractor, clean the house, put together a care package for L. We'll travel to Mount Pleasant this weekend to hear her play but really, I just can't wait to smell her hair as I tuck her into my arms. This and other ways to be home.