This is My Well

Timing and mood.

A wintry mix of snow and ice falls with hesitation, maybe apologetically, on unopened daffodils. Tiny balls of ice bounce when they land on a ground whose breath smells so hungrily of spring. It happens every year – this icy hiccup of timing. First blossoms are always ruined by this kind of storm. Michigan has her way of staying honest no matter how many ways one tries to romanticize her dunes or pines or bears.

Movement against the descent catches my eye – a nuthatch works its way up the oak – two hops forward, one hop back. Otherwise, the entirety of spring has hunkered down for the storm. From my nest in the couch I can see where I had been working the dirt yesterday. My shoulders and back ache as a reminder of how hard I had reached. Now on the other side of this white veil, the toil seems a little bit silly. But this is my well . . . this writing, this Michigan, this untamable yet utterly mundane existence of here and not here. I draw from it – drink and swallow – and invite others in my own quiet way.

Logs in the fire crackle a bit and the wind growls. I am cold, even with a dozing dog curled at my feet. In these moments I write. Signals and awarenesses and the deep lisping of internal shores all converge to urge. It's the way in which the world gives in and gives to and gives up. And then after, when there are words somehow on the page, it is all abandoned. In the wicked white light of April's unmanageable storm, this creative abdication is how I know love. It is the proof of knowing how to be home.