MARCH MADNESS, AGAIN AND AGAIN

THE ICE STORM OF 2011

        If my driveway pilgrimage is like other spiritual quests, March resembles the “slough of despond.” Like Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress, I’m discouraged; I can’t rise above the misery of the harsh weather and pervading deadness all around. Walking or just peering from my upstairs window at the flattened earth with its aging snow piles under sky of sullen grey, I share the lifeless aura of nature. “Rejoice in the day,” I tell myself, but my longing for a renewed Earth overwhelms me. Earlier on in the season, deep in a Midwest winter, I have no such angst—things are supposed to be that way. But in pre-spring (as my Dad once said, “We’re rational animals—but not very”), I  let nature’s gloom creep inside my psyche. I dare speculate that “This is my Father’s World,” with its cheery line “he shines in all that’s fair,” wasn’t written in March in Michigan.
(written in 2008 in All Nature Sings: March, page 61)
 

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COMPASS PLANT - 3 DAYS AFTER ICE STORM