Spring Ephemera
by Lailah Dainin Shima
I don’t know
How tiny, chartreuse
Spears push through
Thawing earth, penetrate
Layers of leathered
Oak leaves, reaching
Unseen sun, not moved
By fear or even hope
Not freighted with worry
How blood rivers its way
Through my body
How I hear it whirring
How like this crocus
These purple-sleeved arms
Open wide to sky, to light
For the time being unclouded
How like these snowdrops
This white head bows
To the muddy mess
Of transformation.
I love how this poem begins in humility, with the admission that the speaker doesn’t know “how tiny, chartreuse/Spears push through/Thawing earth.” How does spring happen again and again each year, evidence of a strength and resilience many of us might admire, especially as we wonder at the ways we have survived this pandemic year? How do wildflowers push through the still-frozen and rocky earth to unfurl such fragile blooms? Lailah Dainin Shima compares herself to those spring ephemera, and though she rightly points out that these snow drops and crocuses are not “moved/By fear or even hope,” I nevertheless find great hope in her gentle reminder at the end of the poem that there is no blossoming, no transformation, without “the muddy mess” that gives rise to it all. As Dylan Thomas once famously pointed out, “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower” also drives each of us, since we too are a part of the nature we observe reemerging again from its long sleep.
Invitation for Writing & Reflection: Describe some of the signs of resilience and rebirth in your own world, wondering at the images and sensory details of this annual rebirth.
ABOUT THE POET: LAILAH DAININ SHIMA
Lailah Dainin Shima walks and writes on the shores of Lake Wingra. She loves folding poems into envelopes she drops into mailboxes and forgets. Some of them have shown up in One Art Poetry, the Buddhist Poetry Review, and CALYX Journal.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: JAMES CREWS
James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry: The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of two anthologies: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and have been reprinted in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. James teaches at SUNY-Albany and lives with his husband in Vermont.
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Oh yes. Bless this mess. I love the way this poem bows so deeply to the I Don’t Know … a celebration of the mystery all around and inside of us. Brava, Lailah!