you begin again

Amitava's going to scold me for being cryptic once more; but there's no way to be direct about the details right now. Some things that I thought had been decided are now undecided; it's good news rather than bad: a different door might be opening, and all shall be well either way. Still, it's messing with my head a little.

This sudden shift, upon the heels of other disturbances and disjunctures, has left me terribly restless. I'd like the uncertainties to come to an end. I want it to be spring, now. I want the cold winds to stop blowing. I want to make my plans and plant my garden--yes, there will be a garden, this year--and sit out in the warm air with my loved ones; smoke cigarettes on fire escapes, organize picnic expeditions. It's been a tough winter for all of us, and I want it to end.

In my anxious anticipation of a phone call this afternoon, a friend wished me 'good luck'--except he abbreviated it to 'gluck', and my mind being what it is, I read it as Glück. And I remembered reading a new poem of hers in the New Yorker last week--when in the midst of some tiresome story about the commercialization of pomegranates during a D-train commute, I turned a page to find this late-March musing. The season of discoveries is beginning.

The phone call was late, and I spent most of the next half-hour covertly reading portions of The Wild Iris online. By the time it finally came, I had mellowed back to a state of something close to peacefulness, and I've managed to stay there since.

Finally the dog goes in.
We watch the crescent moon,
very faint at first, then clearer and clearer
as the night grows dark.
Soon it will be the sky of early spring, stretching above the stubborn ferns and
violets.

Nothing can be forced to live.
The earth is like a drug now, like a voice from far away,
a lover or master. In the end, you do what the voice tells you.
It says forget, you forget.
It says begin again, you begin again.